


Storm of Sand, Rage of Fire

by MueraRashaye



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Loyalty, M/M, Multi, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-01-17 00:42:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 48,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1367605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MueraRashaye/pseuds/MueraRashaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Makiguchi Katashi, personal guard to the Godaime Kazekage, woke up five years before the failed invasion that changed everything for Suna. Unsure if he was trapped in a genjutsu (they'd been fighting crazy Sharingan wielders after all), he went through his day per usual before realizing one thing.</p><p>His best friend was killed by his then-yet-now crazy Kage today. So genjutsu or not, he had to try.</p><p>He failed, but that was okay. Because his then-not-now crazy Kage had woken up disoriented too. And it wasn't a genjutsu.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Crushing Butterflies

He smelled food.

And not half-burned rabbit or squirrel or… or whatever the hell they could get their hands on. He smelled real, honest to kami food.

Plain brown rice with a dash of soy, a drop or two of wasabi if he wasn’t mistaken, and eggplant. _Eggplant_. He hadn’t had eggplant in _months_ , and he’d had to fight Sharingan no Kakashi for it! In the end, they had agreed to split the eggplant, but it had taken a long and bitter struggle to get that concession.

Between that and the futon he was lying on, it was clear he was hallucinating or under a genjutsu. Or both – the combination resulted in some particularly strange ones.

Smoothly rising to his feet, Katashi glanced out the window and froze. Definitely a genjutsu. Moonlight was falling down on Sunagakure, months after it had been wiped off the map by Akatsuki’s efforts, sending the entirety of the population to Konoha to join the Fourth War for good. But the moon was bright, clear and soft in its light, so gentle compared to the burning sun of his desert.

Not the dark, twisted thing it was supposed to become in Madara’s victory, triumphantly glaring down on them all as they went about their lives unaware.

What was going on?

“Running late again taich-oh shit!” before he could process just _who_ he was hearing, Katashi had thrown a shuriken from the holster he kept strapped to his leg at all times, the individual in his doorway twisting aside to avoid the whirling edges and the tool embedded itself in the far wall.

He lunged forward with a kunai in hand, the no longer shocked target grabbing his extended arm and slamming him against the hall’s wall, the adobe quivering with the impact. He shook off the bruising and wrenched the shuriken out to throw it again, following up with chakra-string deflection so the first dodge wasn’t enough.

“The hell is going on here?! Taicho! Kohai! Enough!”

He froze, a tremor he was unable to suppress running through him at that voice. _The_ voice, so far as he was concerned. The kunoichi he had been manhandling jerked at the tone too, the surprised quarter-flinch a move so familiar it made him doubt.

“Taicho?” his second, his _partner_ , walked closer and he couldn’t bear to look at him directly, couldn’t bear to take more than the corner-of-his-eye glimpses but something in him breaking and wailing at not being able to blankly stare and drink in every detail of those living features.

“Kaoru, get going, you’ll be late for assignments,” the kunoichi nodded shortly and darted away, Katashi not letting his eyes stray from the place where she’d been tensed, ready to defend herself from him again.

“You died,” Katashi finally rasped, frozen in his half-crouch, still ready to lunge at a no-longer-there opponent.

“Ah hell, taicho,” Takeshi sighed, his fellow ANBU pulling him upright and into a half-hug, Katashi hooking his fingers on the man’s jounin vest and shuddering. “Just a dream this time, taicho. Just a dream. What did it this time?”

“That kid,” Katashi shuddered again, convulsively. There was no doubt who he was referring too, and even after becoming his Kazekage’s personal guard-medic-advisor-friend rolled into one, references to the man’s earlier state sent a chill down his spine and a tremor into his hands. Suna before the invasion lived with a time-bomb in its walls, the ANBU lived with a crushing KI and doom _every damned day_. There was a reason that their elite forces had the shortest lifespan of any in the Elemental nations, and that reason was named Gaara.

Takeshi knew it too, everyone knew it, and he didn’t bother with platitudes and instead let Katashi finish reassuring himself that today, at least, it wasn’t true.

“Taicho, we do have assignments being handed out in twenty minutes, and I actually managed to make food successfully this time, which you know is rare on my rotation. So we should get moving.”

Katashi nodded, straightening and heading back to his room, getting ready with practiced speed and forcibly shoving aside questions as to what was going on, where he was, and if _this was seriously happening_ because if he wasn’t completely insane, if this _wasn’t_ a genjutsu then – then this was unbelievable. Incredible. And stupid.

Securing his jounin vest over the standard issue dark tan shirt, he pulled on his knuckle-covering gloves and checked the buckles on his holsters while he bitterly mused on the uselessness of his position. What exactly could he do, now? Gaara psychotic and murderous, at least five years out from the failed invasion, with him not obtaining his highest rank until after that.

He had no influence outside the ANBU, he wasn’t political, he was just another ANBU captain. There was _nothing_ he could do right now.

 _Not true,_ he forced himself to think, walking out of the room after securing his head-cloth and hita-ate. _Not true at all. I can train. I can be ready. And when Gaara comes back_ Gaara _, I can be here._

 _You can be here, and hate. And hate and hate and hate because of what he did and what you couldn’t –_ he forced himself to stop thinking. To focus instead on the box of rice and eggplant with a touch of soy and wasabi, just like he’d smelled earlier, that Takeshi had handed him with chopsticks as they stepped out the door. The pair of them had lived together since their genin days, two orphaned veterans from the Third War banding their limited resources together, and even though now they could more than afford their own apartments, the brief experiment when Takeshi had advanced to jounin before him had ended rather quickly. They were just too used to living in one another’s pockets.

So when a kunoichi, rejected by her civilian family in the capital, had joined their team and they had spotted her utter rat’s nest of an apartment, they’d kicked down the door and dragged their little kohai kicking and screaming to the spare bedroom-then-office of their apartment and refused to let her leave until she found a place of her own that _wasn’t_ a hazard to any living thing within a block’s distance.

 _Alive alive they’re alive alive all alive so alive so happy so alive alive_ , he could sense the mantra repeating, barely sensible, barely coherent in his mind, just looping back and forth back and forth as he took in the scent of his village the taste of his eggplant the warmth of Takeshi’s presence beside him.

Running over the roofs while eating fresh food from an old take-out box was nothing new, so by the time they reached headquarters for their assignments he had finished and deposited the box in a waste-basket, the chopsticks licked clean and tucked into his vest for later, much to Takeshi’s long-standing disgust.

Expertly ignoring the sanitation rant of his friend, he paced the familiar route to their lockers, opening his with a flash of handsigns and flicks of fingers to unseal the personal security he’d added to the thing, pulling his sand-shaded burnoose and draping it over his daily uniform, hooking his mask to his belt and securing the ninjato over his left shoulder per usual. Depending on assignment, he’d come back and ditch his vest entirely to don the battle-armor lurking in his locker.

The old uniform, a second skin after all these years, felt a comfort, a homecoming. The special extra-long turtleneck standard for Suna-nin to keep sand out of their noses was secured up to cover half his face (how he had _laughed_ to find out that Hatake half-funded the black-market for Suna shinobi gear) and he glanced over at the similarly garbed Takeshi, who squinted a smile at him before leading the way to the central room for their assignments.

As was usual, the date and time were read out at the beginning of the assembly, and they all stiffened to attention as the shift-commander took his place in front of them. Kateshi could feel the date twitch in his mind, shivering its way through his memories as he tried to recall the reason it sent a tremor through his heart. Being a shinobi, days and deaths had a way of blurring, only the most memorable, the most _fantastical_ truly embedded in the mind with deaths taking far greater priority over days.

Before he could reach a conclusion, the shift commander said flatly, “The Kazekage’s youngest is missing, presumably wandering the desert.”

No one spoke. No one dared breathe lest it call attention to them.

“This will be a solo mission, search and observe. Should the… boy wander further than ten miles from the village, he is to be returned by any means necessary. Standing orders are that back-up is called if he hits the eight mile mark for safety’s sake.”

It was the one order that few Suna shinobi followed. They had seen enough comrades pay that bloody desert god that they wouldn’t drag more with them. If it weren’t for the terror of someone figuring a way to control the beast and sending it to attack them, _someone_ would have figured out a way to let him wander all the way to another nation.

All of this was known, understood. It had happened often enough, and there hadn’t been any newcomers recently so everyone had seen one of these missions get issued and had heard about the near inevitable ending. Every two out of three, someone, several someones, was crushed to a bloody paste and their name was added to the monster’s toll.

If there were something he truly hated, it was Shukaku.

This entire process was a delay of the inevitable, the reading of the next name on the list. They went through all the currently-active ANBU in order of date joined, so the newest ideally had some time before their name was called. What it really meant was that everyone knew exactly when their time was up and it was their turn to play a game of chance with the desert’s personal blood collector.

Bakemono Eiji finally glanced at the list in his hand, a useless gesture in all likelihood, and his eyes tightened, a reaction unusual in an ANBU, but too common in these circumstances. Katashi waited for the name, unable to remember who had been called last with so many years lying between his most recent memories and today (how had this happened, he shoved aside again), before recognizing the slight tremor in Takeshi, standing shoulder to shoulder with him as usual.

His eyes widened with horror as he realized why the day was important, why it quivered painfully in his mind. _Takeshi_. It was too soon! He had three more days, three more days! No, no this couldn’t – changed already? How – no time no time _no time_ “I volunteer.”

Silence, then a flurry of rustling as everyone turned to stare at him, Takeshi’s eyes boring into the side of his head while Katashi just raised his chin and locked eyes with an incredulous Eiji. “I volunteer,” he repeated, panic settling again, subsiding as he acted.

“Like hell you – “

“Don’t. Make. Me. Stab. You,” Katashi growled, voice low and dangerous and so _achingly desperate_ how could no one hear that? – no matter didn’t matter not now.

“You are aware, that this does not remove your name from the selection?” Eiji informed him calmly, “The current placement does not change, that operative will be next, and when your turn comes again it will still be yours?”

“Yes,” Katashi said shortly. Everyone damn well knew ‘that operative’ was Takeshi. And they all damn well knew that right after Takeshi’s name on that list was Katashi’s. He was volunteering for two jobs in, possibly, as many days. For nothing, really. For not even a significant delay for Takeshi.

All he needed to do was get him past these three days. _All he needed to do_. If he had to figure out a way to lead Gaara through the desert for three whole days without exiting the ten-mile window, he’d do it. He’d kill his future Kage, his future friend his future leader because he _could not let_ Takeshi be crushed to paste before his eyes, not now, not again, not ever.

“Very well. Squad Alpha, your assignment – “

“The _hell_ are you thinking?” Takeshi hissed in his ear while Eiji continued issuing squad-level assignments. “You bastard it’s not going to _change_ anything – “

“Not today, Takeshi,” Katashi murmured, eyes bright with desperate grief and fear and _kami it hurt so much_ , “Not _today_.”

“The dream. Are you fucking serious this is because of some – “

“Not. Today.”

“So what, if you _hadn’t_ had that nightm-“

“I’d have let it go,” Katashi lied, “I damn well know it probably won’t change a thing. But not today. Not today.”

If he had to he’d volunteer for every damned assignment from here until his death to keep Takeshi off that list and out of that grasp. Until he figured out a way to get through to Gaara himself. Until he resigned himself to sticking a crackling hand through his Kage’s child-sized torso.

Takeshi glared at him, recognizing the lack of _something_ in his response but unable to pin it down – Katashi always could lie to him, just barely – before letting it go and barking an acceptance to Squad Epsilon’s joint assignment with Gamma, smoothly taking command of the now one-man down squad.

Katashi let his fingers brush against his second’s sleeve as he turned to leave, Crow mask slipping over his face and hood raised over the ensemble, straps tightened to secure them both for his run through windy dunes. He didn’t need to ask for directions, he was a half-decent sensor, and that was all he needed to detect that poisonous raging chakra to the northeast.

Chakra burst into his limbs and he launched over the roofs of Sunagakure, running faster than anyone going after Sabaku no Gaara at this point had a right to. But he needed to get this over with, to put the sight of his comrades of his friends behind him and _think_ about what the hell he was going to do. Because Takeshi could not die this way. He would not let it happen again, not while he still breathed.

And fat lot of good he would do with all these years locked up in his head, critical knowledge lurking in his mind, if he died today.

The ripples of his death, he felt, would be relatively insignificant. Maybe Takeshi would become the protector-advisor-friend to their next Kazekage, maybe Takeshi would take his place in the ranks of the Fourth Shinobi War and the chaos that followed and preceded.

At least the fight with Hatake would be averted, Takeshi didn’t particularly care for eggplant.

He launched up onto the cliffs, flashing handsigns at the patrols conveying his purpose and one custom sigil developed in recent years returning to him every time. It was a variation of the standard good luck gesture, seldom used by anyone because luck was scorned by professionals (fools), but this variant essentially meant ‘may the demon not thirst for your blood today’.

He didn’t hold out much hope, because _Takeshi_.

It had been a bare half-hour – half over rocky cliffs, half across dunes – when he caught glimpse of the bright red hair and pitifully small figure that had Suna cowering. He stopped, crouching down to observe the target. He didn’t appear to be going anywhere, the sand around him moving unnaturally as the boy practiced his abilities.

On one level, since he wasn’t going anywhere and they were well within the ten mile limit – even the eight mile limit was a ways off – Katashi could sit here and watch, and wait, and eventually the boy would head back to Suna for lack of any other options and needing food.

On another, Katashi knew that if that happened, this would happen again one day and Takeshi would be sent out because he wouldn’t let Katashi volunteer for him again without drastic actions being taken, and Takeshi would be crushed again and Katashi would break. He could not witness that again.

He remembered reports from the chuunin exams and invasion years ago, he had been assigned the home-guard and had missed it, but he had heard of it. And he had heard of the attack of chirping lightning that had drawn blood and – if it had been a bit more true, a hair more powerful – could have killed him.

Katashi knew it was a sign of trust that Gaara had not objected to his learning it from Kakashi when the two Kages had been plotting together and their chief protectors-minders-friends had only the other for company.

Trust he was going to break, because the holder of that trust was as good as dead and he could not, _would not_ , risk Takeshi for a man who might very well not exist anymore, may kami forgive him. He knew (hoped, hoped desperately) that Gaara, the Kazekage he had come to know and respect (love, as a leader, as a brother, as a son) would understand and agree.

He ventured closer, letting chakra gather in his hand, slowly pooling as he formed the jutsu he had struggled with so desperately just so he could _know_ , if somehow, somewhere, he encountered something so strong and fierce as Shukaku he had a chance, until the boy detected him, while he was some hundred yards out. Better than he expected at that age, but not good enough with his speed and new jutsu.

Plunging recklessly forward as lightning spiraled into his palm, crackling and chirping and sounding damned _cheery_ for an over-the-top assassination jutsu he was frozen by a tone he recognized, though odd in a higher-pitched voice, barking, “Crow! _Hold!_ ”

He froze, quivering, unable to resolve the figure with the tone and hating himself for it because he had lost his chance, lost it utterly and now he was going to die for _nothing_ –

but…

There was no sand. No chakra charged sand surging up around him, filling into his lungs and suffocating him in burning hot grains as he strained against its unyielding hold and screamed screamed while bones and organs and everything was crushed crushed crushed until all that was left was blood and paste and porcelain dust –

“Crow! Release the chidori before you fall over!”

How did he know the jutsu’s name?

Blankly, he let the jutsu dissipate and dropped to his knees, staring into the unnervingly green eyes in confusion, confusion turning to faint hope at the familiar gleam of worry so foreign to those eyes at this age, faint hope strengthening at the furrowed brow and solidifying at the achingly familiar utterance, “Katashi-san. Report.”

“Godaime?” he rasped, “You – you remember?”

“I remember,” Gaara confirmed, eyes widening with shock, deep circles under his eyes so much darker and deeper than they were as an adult. “You – you came back too?”

“I did, sir. What happened? I remember an idea to counter Tobi’s time-space jutsu, to keep him from phasing through our attacks, but nothing else.”

“The attempt went wrong, all I can presume is that instead of countering the jutsu we were thrown back in time and somehow woke in our old bodies. I was exhausted and ran outside of Suna as fast as I could, so that I could fall asleep and rebind Shukaku without casualties.”

“I woke up in my old apartment,” Katashi supplied, shifting so he was sitting sprawled on the sand, Gaara joining him and the sand forming to comfortable seats and cushions under his direction. It was an old trick, a tired trick by the time they traveled back, but one that was comforting in its tiredness. It was the final confirmation he needed (as if he hadn’t confirmed it enough) that Gaara really was _his Kage_ again.

“I… was very confused. Attacked my youngest teammate when she spoke to me, I believe I thought she was some genjustu construct or imposter. Then – Takeshi, my second in command and other roommate, was there, and I somewhat accepted I had traveled back in time _somehow_ , before reporting in for assignment with ANBU.”

Here he paused, unhooking a canteen of water from his belt and taking a sip before passing it to Gaara, who accepted it with a mute nod of thanks, before he continued, “Your disappearance had been noted and someone was going to be sent out on a search and observe, possibly retrieve, mission and before he read the name on the list I remembered that three days from now, last time, Takeshi died when our squad was sent out to fetch you and I – I couldn’t let that happen. So I volunteered in his place and… and decided that Takeshi alive, _now_ , was worth more than the hope that I could avoid changing things enough you had a chance to become the Kage I remembered again.”

Unable to think of anything else, he prostrated himself at Gaara’s feet, not even able to apologize because it would be a lie and he respected Gaara too much for that.

An incongruously small and soft hand tucked under his chin and tilted his masked face up so their eyes could meet, Gaara having a small, barely there smile on his face (near a grin for him) and he said, “I understand, Katashi. You very rarely spoke about the times prior to the chuunin exams, but I heard you and Kakashi-san getting very drunk one night you were off duty together and remember the name at least.”

“But you’re here,” Katashi said simply, before sitting up on his heels and laughing, “You’re _here_ we’re both _here_! Kaze- hmm. I suppose I can no longer call you that.”

“It is Gaara, as I have said before, and now I will say again,” the red-head glared and Katashi finally ceded victory, after years of arguing, and only because of their new circumstances which made his common formality unwise. “Very well, Gaara-san,” he said, before continuing, “But you are _here_ now, and you have control of Shukaku – and Takeshi is safe from him. We’re _safe_ from him now, by kami we’re safe.”

Everything, all that had happened, his panic, his confusion his terror and adrenaline and joy and winds knew what else was collapsing over him like an oncoming sandstorm and it was all he could do to keep from breaking down into humiliating sobs. As it was, he shuddered and collapsed in on himself, silently cracking right down the middle from sheer relief.

And in a gesture he knew it had taken Naruto-san quite a few years to get Gaara in the habit of, he found too small arms wrapping around him in an attempt to give comfort he greedily accepted to try and shore up his composure until he could activate his room’s privacy seals and one-way silencers so he could completely break down without anyone demanding why and locking him away as yet another shinobi-gone-mad.

Finally he stilled, drawing himself in enough that he was able to restore his composure, his shinobi-mask, and he straightened, shifting so he was sitting more comfortably again in the sand. Gaara’s arms remained tight around his waist and he noticed that his Kage – so small, so fragile – was also shaking. Mutely, he wrapped his arms around the child and returned the favor he had been granted, waiting with unending patience for the trembling to stop and for Gaara to pull away.

He didn’t, even after the trembling had halted, and Katashi could hear his too young too quiet voice from where his face was buried in his burnoose, small fingers clinging to his vest, saying, “Temari and Kankuro are scared of me. They’re _so scared_ Katashi-san.”

Katashi knew the pain Gaara was feeling right now, understood it oh so well as teams broke and shattered around him. The two Gaara had grown to love and trust with everything and had in turn loved and trusted him with everything _back_ were gone. Merciful kami their _world_ was gone – as hard and brutal a fight as it had been they had to go back to killing their old allies, their old friends. Would he come up against those Kumo-nin he had worked with in the first battle, recognize their voices from joking taunts around campfires before he killed them? Would he – kami forbid – go on the invasion mission and come up against the Konoha-nin he had come to view as a near extension of Suna?

“But they won’t be,” Katashi replied, finally, “They weren’t even with five more years of Shukaku’s terrorization bearing down on them so that can be fixed sooner than later.”

“You’re not – you don’t think I should try and preserve the timeline?” Gaara asked softly.

Katashi held back his immediate, violent rejection so he could give a more reasoned one, “No,” he said, “No I do not. Because it would mean Shukaku killing recklessly and wantonly and I will not let you go back to Suna if that is your decision, my Kage or not.”

Gaara shook with silent laughter, before saying, “I did not plan to. I could not do that, not to my people. I meant more the drastic events, the multi-nation ones.”

“Like the invasion?” Katashi sighed heavily, “I do not think we can avert it.”

“Maybe not before we arrive in Konoha, but if we could somehow approach the Hokage and tell him about the plan we could cut off Suna’s involvement at least,” Gaara pulled back from him and sat down, sand forming a comfortable seat around him, “But I also find myself considering who was with us when we constructed that time-space jutsu.”

Katashi nodded, looking up at the bright, bright near-full moon shining down on them. The thought had also crossed his mind, “Naruto-san and Kakashi-san.”

“And Naruto will most certainly not be preserving the timeline perfectly,” Gaara chuckled (giggled, but Katashi would never tell him how adorable he sounded), “So we had best try and get in contact with them.”

“I will start taking missions further afield and try to get assigned those out towards Konoha,” Katashi sighed, “There is not much else we can do. Neither of us have summoning contracts to send messengers with, so we’ll just have to wait.”

Gaara sighed, before slumping tiredly into the sand, “I’m exhausted.”

“Sleep. I’ll keep the watch,” Katashi replied, stretching out on the sand himself and letting his senses expand, noting and cataloguing the inputs so he could quickly recognize any disturbance.

Even and steady breathing from the body now curled against his side gave away Gaara’s exhaustion, and he just smiled, hand dropping down to rest on the boy’s back, other arm twisting up to rest under his head and he stared up at the stars and moon, the sky so clear so crisp so cold in the desert he had missed like a limb, phantom and tingling and aching until he was here. Here and home and _better_ , so better, already.

His Kage was here, in Suna, with his team, his friends his friend-second-partner- _Takeshi_ and they were safe. They were _safe_ and by everything he held dear he would keep them alive and breathing and so, so _alive_ until he could breathe no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this was an experiment in modernist/stream-of-consciousness style narrative. Let me know how that worked out. And yes, I should be working on the other multi-chaps I've left hanging for too long. Instead I write this monstrous chapter. Worth continuing, yeah or nay?
> 
> And title suggestions, because the current one is meh to me.
> 
> Credit for the idea of Gaara going back is definitely not mine - in fact, for a fantastic Gaara-goes-back fic, I highly recommend Cadel's "The First Shifting Grain" on ff.net


	2. How bout them butterflies?

He staggered at speed towards Suna two hours before dawn. Gaara had only been able to sleep a few hours, still unused to it and probably always an insomniac, so they had worked on their skills to determine just how far they had to go.

Then Gaara had whisked away to go back to Suna and Katashi had stayed out for a while longer, practicing and practicing and _practicing_ because he had to make this work and he couldn’t see them yet because he’d burst into tears and wretched sobs and –

He stayed out a few more hours before making his own way back, when he was hit with a mild case of chakra exhaustion, some cuts and bruises (his back had definitely not enjoyed that trip into the adobe wall) also inconvenient. So he took a slower route (still far faster than civilian speeds), until a standard patrol along the cliffs came upon him.

A flurry of fingers and signs and countersigns confirmed his identity and the moment that was confirmed he found green-wreathed hands running over him as two of the four-man squad eased him down onto the sandstone. The other captain, Boar – a captain with two years seniority on him, good man now saved because Shukaku had taken his blood on a mission gone right-wrong _saved_ –

Crouching next to him, Boar gripped his shoulder tightly, offering a silent nod before retreating to stand guard. The medic, Frog, released his iryo-jutsu and said, “Chakra-exhaustion, extensive bruising along his back – deep tissue, gave it a start but most of my work went into the bruised and cracked ribs. A vertebrate was weakened, and there was some pulled musculature from keeping moving. The bones are fixed, you’ll need some more attention back in HQ.”

“Right. Frog, Bee, escort him back. Deer and I will stay here and spar until you get back so we can finish the patrol.”

“Thanks Boar,” Katashi rasped – he’d run out of water, that’s what had started him back.

“Brave thing you did. Stupid, pointless. But brave,” Boar shrugged, “Recover quickly.”

Bee – a deceptively slight man – slung him over his shoulder and turned on his heel, Katashi allowing the manhandling gracefully. Right now he just wanted to get back and sleep and wake up screaming as per usual and panic about where and when he was before he would pull it together and proceed about his day and try to figure out a way to contact Konoha.

But he would do it. He would do it all. Because _they were safe_.

He was deposited on a bed in their medical center, medics quickly healing him up enough for him to be fit for duty in a couple day’s time so long as he didn’t do anything stupid, then sending him on his way. Everyone he encountered had a brief touch, a quick nod, a glance at least, to share. It was an old ritual, to welcome a comrade back, and if it was one that everyone was more ardent about when it came to Shukaku missions well – it was rare enough to constitute a minor miracle when it occurred.

Mask locked away with his ninjato and hood lowered, burnoose common enough within Suna to not draw attention, he slowly made his way out of HQ, gracefully (gingerly) leaping onto the roofs so he could reach home. Some tea and some sleep, just what the medics ordered and he desired. A rare coincidence.

Reaching the door to their apartment, he let his head drop forward to rest on the wood, letting his memories of the sounds and smells and tastes and _voices_ that filled this apartment wash over him. It had echoed, with Takeshi’s death. Kaoru had tried, the poor girl had tried, and their fourth member, Hirano Ikku, had even moved in temporarily, but five months after that, Hirano and Takeshi’s replacement had died, leaving him and Kaoru, poor girl, drowning in an apartment that had once been a home.

Finally, she had turned in her resignation to ANBU and moved out, though Katashi had dragged himself forward enough to insist on inspecting her future home to ensure quality. They had laughed over the old argument, laughed and bid farewell.

She had died invading Konoha, how he hated Orochimaru and the elders for agreeing. Her old genin, at least, had passed the previous exam and had been under him in the home guard.

It wasn’t until Gaara came back _Gaara_ and he had been forced to go on some missions with the newly sane young man that he had been able to sit in the apartment without feeling ghosts surrounding him.

That was when he broke down and moved out, to a small one-room affair more appropriate to a broken old ANBU like him. Then had come his promotions over the deaths of his comrades, Gaara’s ascent, Akatsuki, brief peace, a new war and then – oh and then.

But it didn’t matter, did it? None of it had happened _(yet)_ and none (some, most, all) of it would happen. So he really needed to get his act together and open the door before he fell asleep leaning on it and wouldn’t that be embarrassing to have his team (his team oh kami his _team_ ) find him passed out in front of his own door like some drunkard?

Pushing his chakra into the security seals, he opened it without any alerts being sounded and stepped in, letting it click shut behind him. He was too busy staring at the three people sitting on the futons in the main room, cards and pile of knick-knacks indicating what they’d been doing to pass the time. They must have had a simple joint patrol mission then, nothing truly strenuous for today. That was common. When someone was sent out on a Shukaku mission the team was usually left with easy, one-day missions because their focus would be shot.

“Oh thank the winds,” Takeshi breathed, dropping his cards and bolting over, pulling Katashi into a fierce hug that he returned quite happily, ignoring the aches caused by the rather tight grip.

Kaoru, the purple-haired girl, joined next with a glad cry of, “Taicho!” while Ikku just stood and came over to clasp his shoulder, the taciturn man’s relieved expression exclamation enough.

Katashi just drank it all in, heart swelling as he felt his team-friends-family- _everything_ gather around him for the first time in near ten years, whole and unbroken and kami so _perfect_ he could hardly bear it. “You, old friend, are not allowed to volunteer for something ever again,” Takeshi said around incredulous laughs, Kaoru pulling back with a grin and darting into the kitchen. Ikku just chuckled, a rumbling, bone-deep sound he had missed so much.

“I’ll do my best,” Katashi allowed, dropping down onto one of the futons and stretching out, Takeshi rolling his eyes and lifting his feet so he could sit down, Katashi’s legs dropped to drape across his lap. A small smile on his face as Ikku and Takeshi cheerfully switched out some of their poorer cards, Katashi draped an arm over his eyes and let himself drift to true sleep for the first time in too long, friendly-familiar chakra-scents-voices-everything swaddling him in security he hadn’t felt in – well. In too long.

He was home.

Wake. Genjutsu? No – predetermined it wasn’t. Home, he was home, by _kami_ he was home – Kaoru, friendly, not an imposter yes hello good morning off to assignments and training. Sleep. Safe. So safe, so _home_.

He almost let himself fall into a routine, just rejoicing in being _home_ in being _here_ but there were just enough jarring inconsistencies to keep him from slipping entirely into the past as if the future had never happened.

Takeshi was alive. Every moment he sensed that chakra shadowing him through a mission, felt that clap on the shoulder at a job well done, a joke well told, heard the familiar phrases rants laughs he felt his heart swell with joy and the mantra surged _alive alive so alive alive happy content safe alive_. Even the next Shukaku mission failed to shake him, though he painted it well, Takeshi elbowing him viciously to keep him from volunteering (unnecessary) and left trying to feign anxiety he felt only at the absence of his friend-partner-center.

He had to build up his old techniques and reputation again. He had been an average genin in the Third War, Takeshi and he unique only in their remarkable teamwork. They had been equally unremarkable chuunin, until a mission gone wrong for Katashi had sent Takeshi rocketing through the rankings so he could cherry-pick a mission that sent him in the same direction.

The ‘coincidental’ finding and fight for freedom was something viewed with bemused distaste by many Suna-nin, at least officially. Unofficially they had become more trusted for it, for accomplishing missions _and_ saving their comrades when they could and even when they only ‘could’.

Takeshi had been promoted to jounin while Katashi recovered and regained his old skills, before he followed Takeshi into promotion and then into ANBU, receiving their invitations from the same hand in the same moment and joining the same way.

But at all times they were average – good, excellent, they had to be, but average A-rank nins, no extraordinary bounties on their heads, not listed in every bingo-book, relatively unknown outside their village. It was a good place to be, really. But if he was going to keep from losing his old-new-so confusing skills, he needed to practice.

And to practice, he needed to build up. It’d be nice to have his old moniker again.

So if his friends and comrades were a little confused by his new passion for exploring wind-jutsu, they shrugged it off as a natural development. Everyone went through phases where they were more passionate about novel training rather than simple maintenance, this was just one of those.

Of course, that dragged a bemused team into it, Takeshi and Kaoru improving their already impressive kenjutsu while Ikku decided to improve his trapping techniques and tracking while he was at it. All Katashi could do was look on in contentment as Takeshi learned a kata he’d never had the chance too, as Kaoru discovered her gift for dual-wielding, undiscovered until she’d left ANBU last time, and Ikku learned to place and escape traps that had claimed him the last time around.

And before he knew it, it had been months, and they were training as a team in the cliffs when an urgent message arrived in the form of the ANBU Commander himself, all four of them snapping to attention when the man, mask blank and unpainted but for the Suna sigil on his forehead, appeared in the training grounds. “Squad Epsilon,” he said shortly, “The Kazekage’s children have been taken while training outside the walls. You will join the personal guard in pursuit and rescue. Meet at the Eastern Gate in ten.”

He then vanished in a swirl of sand, shunshining to next on his list. Katashi swore, Takeshi echoing him even as the four launched forward to reach ANBU HQ as quickly as possible so they could don their full armor, grab scrolls sealing supplies of all sorts and sign out, making it to the gate in eight. Katashi listened as the head of the other four-man squad gave the briefing, fierce anger thrumming in his blood because _this hadn’t happened_ before. Even with his mourning and grey-bleak-bland state after Takeshi’s death he would have noticed the Kazekage’s children being attacked and successfully abducted.

If this attempt had happened then, Gaara-as-Shukaku must have stopped it. Now, if the boy were knocked out Shukaku wasn’t freed to rampage, which made the potential for kidnapping much higher. This meant there would probably be an actual bodyguard squad assigned to the Kazekage’s youngest, whereas before he was just left to his own devices. Katashi would have to see about getting on that rotation, it might make meeting up easier.

The group of eight was racing across the dunes, Katashi able to sense Gaara’s familiar chakra in that direction and the protection detail having a scent and sensor based tracker team to get them the proper heading as well. The sun was beating down on them, and Katashi took the opportunity to work on his own sand-techniques, an extension of his sensor-talents this time.

Extending his chakra out in the direction of their target, he let it tap on every grain it touched and his attention fractured with an expert twist. Angles wind feet – target? no rabbit ignore move on – sun heat baking wind scatters across the dunes strike! tumble down twist burn heat hot blue blue blue so bright and gold and hot –

Running, still running, feet not pounding, gliding over sand across sand under sand team-family- _Takeshi_ –

Eruption poison it _burns_ –

“Got ‘em,” he said flatly, “Shukaku’s woken up.”

“Heading?”

“Nor-nor-east, adjusting now,” and he planted a heel to spin to the proper heading and launched forward, leading this time and keeping his net extended out, now in all directions so he could detect anyone approaching them in an ambush.

It was disorienting – strike wind flurry blue! – with footsteps sending sand spiraling into the air to crash down, shadows suddenly – hot cool hot too hot cool only a moment golden heat hot – weaving in and out against the dunes. But he could feel the target and he could feel _their_ target – slash of air whirl of tessen strike blue gold _hot_ – even as Shukaku roared and bubbled up under Gaara’s control – burning poison crushing pressure burns it burns it _burns_ fling crush grind wet –

Wet cool damp fall in clumps and scatter absorb moisture greedily heat bakes baking blood – some nin were down, it seemed. He reported that to the others, but there was no time for them to reply as they heard Shukaku’s roar echoing in the empty dunes, just barely starting to transition to the scrub and mesquite that formed the border with Fire and River country.

Somehow they all found an extra burst of speed and with no need to speak to coordinate targets (because they were _ANBU_ , this was what they _did_ ) the group of eight hurtled into the fight between a half-delirious Kankuro who was still tripping the nin who’d abducted him up, sending them into Temari’s flurry of wind-jutsu’s, a vicious blood-stained smile on the girl’s bruised face.

Shukaku wasn’t fully manifested, Katashi recognized it as a false-Shukaku construct Gaara had started using when they’d heard about Akatsuki’s targets, and it was focused on one target only, who he well recognized from the future and couldn’t help but respect. It was Kakuzu of the Hidden Waterfall. Wasn’t _that_ interesting?

He pulled all his chakra back in, shattered foci merging back so he was all in one place again. If he was going to be helping his Kage with Kakuzu he would need everything he could get.

The man was laughing as sand poured in onto him, his masks apparently hidden away from their crushing power, but Katashi just grinned, drawing his ninjato and plunging forward, winds answering his call and spiraling twisting slashing sand shifted and _there_ first blood!

Kakuzu snarled and lunged for him, engaging in a brutal tai and kenjutsu battle, Katashi struggling to keep the rapid pace. Parry strike lunge – _there had to be an opening just need to –_ twist out of the way slash with a breeze spring overhead land and twist – _Gaara didn’t look so good did they poison him? –_ fuck those damn threads he _hated_ those blasted things _move_ – where was back-up the others couldn’t be at this level, could they?

His brief distraction cost him and Kakuzu flashed through a lightning release, bolts leaping for him and Katashi swore, lunging back and diving into the sand of the dunes, using his mixed Earth and Wind affinities to move through it easily.

He could still feel the heat and _burn_ of the lightning forming dune-glass above him and he didn’t waste a moment, crashing up and through the dune-glass barely solid and calling wind to hurl the razor hot-sharp shards at Kakuzu, distracted by Takeshi’s earth jutsu at least momentarily.

No time for triumph, the back of Kakuzu’s shirt was shredded and the masks were just visible, one with a promising crack down the middle but not enough. Quick, engage – _kami he was fucking fast_ – dodge hurl a wind-enhanced shuriken was that a stumble – _Ikku! Genjutsu perfect timing old friend_ – kunai digs deep deep into his chest slotting between ribs nicely there you are one heart down four to go!

A brief pause on the others’ part though – they didn’t recognize Kakuzu’s techniques and he barely got Kaoru out of the way of threads aiming for her heart when he heard screams and oh kami _no you don’t you crow-bait scum!_

Wind-chakra pouring down his ninjato he severed every last one of those blasted cursed threads digging into wiggling through buried under friend-partner-center- _no you will not have him I refuse!-_ Takeshi’s skin. It was too much though and Katashi’s ninjato, not a chakra-enhanced blade to begin with, shattered under the strain, all he could do to keep the shards from striking his wounded comrades.

Kakuzu had taken advantage of that delay, grabbing a semi-conscious but struggling Gaara, sand erupting around him even as he took off north again. Katashi snarled and hesitated for one long desperate _what did he do who did he go after why was this even a question his Kage needed him_ – gone. He bolted, charging into the desert with the wind at his back to give him even further speed, something he needed desperately to catch up to Kakuzu.

Chakra signatures let him know that he wasn’t alone in his pursuit, but they were falling behind. He’d have to hold him until they caught up then. Damn. Hand going to his belt he quickly pulled out a soldier pill and ripped down his cloth mask to stuff it in his mouth under the cool porcelain. Resettling his gear without so much as a hitch in his step, Katashi acknowledged that he was going to have to use his old move, one he hadn’t yet had a chance to build up to and actually practice with his new, lesser reserves. Good thing he’d had that soldier pill.

He threw his awareness outward again, chakra letting him draw the air-currents the sand the sun his home every little piece of it into himself into his being it became him he became it and then he waited waited and ran, ran so fast until _there the monster was CRUSH HIM!_

Winds howled and roared and dunes buckled and surged up around him around them and he could almost _hear_ Gaara’s wondering laugh as the desert responded like it never did except to him – _now is not the time to reminisce, focus! –_ every piece of the desert, his home what he’d studied and loved and cherished and missed answering his call responding as he predicted and raising up a highly localized highly chaotic symphony of bone-searing heat and skin piercing winds and lung clogging sand called the _storm_.

Kakuzu snarled in rage and he felt him plunge back towards him, the winds and sands his eyes and ears and he was _ready_ for this fool for this coward ha! Fist surging forwards he crushed Kakuzu’s windpipe, about to stab down into his back after his flip and barely managing to avoid stabbing a frighteningly still Gaara who was strapped to the man’s back.

Snarling in frustration he sprang back up and away into the storm, Kakuzu’s taunting laughter following him. _Think! Think how was this done before – more than one person idiot – one down four to go four to go come on this is possible you can_ do this _just go!_

Flurry of movement flash of seals wind juts out over his knuckles following the metal ribs of his gloves to create the humming-blue blades of razor now find him find him there and slash twist around the threads and knives _shit_ that was a slice _stab_ up and left and _twist_ the fist in his chest cut those pulsing organs to nothing one more down! Gaara cried out and he took Kakuzu’s brief pause to absorb a heart to cut the cords holding Gaara to him and slam him out into the storm, trusting the desert to take care of her favored son for now.

Wind whipped around them and sliced deep with sharp sand – only his mask keeps his own squinting wincing and watering eyes safe, Kakuzu’s are gouged deep with sand and he can probably barely see shit _move it_! The wind tugged him out of the way, easily carrying him out of Kakuzu’s strike’s path the moment he released his chakra-enhanced hold on the ground and Kakuzu snarled, changing tactics and burrowing into the sandy earth.

 _Can’t let him reach solid earth he’ll escape! Narrow focus force it there_ – winds twisted and contracted and he fell onto the sand once more, dunes rustling as the winds howled, forcing into a funnel that Naruto-san had actually helped him with and he drove it down into the sand pulverizing sand to powder and dunes to sand and rocks to dust and where was he where was he _had to find him_ got it!

Threads surged and pulsed up around his tornado of razor-sharp wind and sand, smothering it but not without serious damage and Katashi was heartened to see Kakuzu leap out of the sand-blasted and scraped pit he’d formed with only one mask-figure beside him – two left he’d almost done it kami he was so tired he needed to rest – no! Not now!

Kakuzu’s expression was grimly focused as he dove towards him with even faster taijutsu than before, Katashi barely able to keep up and faltering occasionally, deep bruises gouges and if he wasn’t mistaken a cracked rib shit shit _shit_ –

Judging by the barriers, pits and earthen spears that he was now twisting his way around desperately trying to catch a breath, Kakuzu had absorbed his earth mask.

Crap where was the other -?

Sand blasted into him and he was flung away, barely able to control his landing to avoid injuring himself further but there was no time, by the time he fell Kakuzu was there striking him in the gut with a vicious strong punch and sending him crashing back again _fuck_ he was tired.

No he wouldn’t stop he couldn’t he _would not he refused_ – slash with a kunai, gather chakra as much as possible – _no no not doing that tunnel-vision isn’t a good thing let’s leave that for now_ – dodge dodge slip and dodge again, twist away from the blow strike at a tendon blade skitters of bone _dammit_ he wasn’t doing very well was he?

Suddenly someone else was there and he had a chance to breathe – Cat, it was Cat, protection detail never worked with him before – _oh that was a nice water jutsu, very unexpected where’d he get the water? –_ chance to pop another soldier pill, last one of the day unless he wanted to die (no not just yet please).

Hands trembling as raw chakra pulsed through his exhausted muscles, he searched out the other mask and found it dead and shattered thank kami. Returning his focus to Kakuzu, he realized that the nuke-nin knew damn well all his other hearts were spent and his time was coming up and he was trying to get away he couldn’t get away not when they were so damned _close_.

Cellular level, damage at the cellular level – couldn’t do that not here, not enough control – control control that was what he didn’t have that was what he couldn’t use perfect! Grinning with a twist of chapped lips he sent his chakra burrowing into the sand, a familiar poisonous chakra joining him and he nearly laughed as he spotted a slowly moving head of red hair.

He waited for the other ANBU to be thrown back and Gaara led the surge, rising to his feet and hands sweeping out in one smooth motion (Katashi was left barely on his knees, hands locked in a hand-sign to concentrate) while sand boiled up around the struggling nuke-nin, covering him entirely except for his head and by _kami_ this was the only time he’d ever really been thrilled to see that Sand Coffin jutsu, Kakuzu’s head all that was recognizable of the paste his body had become.

“Fuck was that?” Cat gasped, propping himself up slowly, “Crow, status?”

“Exhausted,” Katashi croaked, pulling out one of their corpse scrolls and staggering to his feet, sealing away the head of a world-renowned nuke-nin (now _there_ was the timeline shot to hell) with slightly shaking hands. He turned to Gaara, who was swaying where he stood, still looking unhealthily pale, and gave a thumbs up, “Nice one. We’re awesome!”

He threw his arms up in the air and collapsed back into the bloody sand-paste that was Kakuzu. He should probably be grossed out about it, but he was too tired to care. And now that the adrenaline was wearing off, all those aches and pains (and cuts and cracked-broken-damaged bones and scrapes and maybe a pulled muscle or two) came roaring back and he groaned, “Damage Cat?”

“Minimal. Sprained wrist, some cuts, don’t think they’re poisoned.”

“I have a scroll of medical supplies.”

“I do to, standard issue – think you can bandage me?”

“Ugh, no. I can’t move… Gaara-san? Have you been taught how to bandage wounds?”

“Umm… I’ll be fine, really – “

“Yes,” Gaara said flatly, walking over to Cat, who was shaking slightly now. Even with months and no deaths, Gaara’s reputation wasn’t one that would be worked past quickly or easily, especially not without an emergency or failed invasion culling a lot of the old shinobi forces and leaving them desperate for a strong figure to latch onto.

Katashi watched carefully as Cat fearfully let Gaara tend to his wounds, small hands expertly prodding and salving and binding the injuries before neatly returning everything to the scroll in a flurry of hand-seals. “Crow-san, may I examine your injuries?” Gaara asked formally, slight quirk of his lips when Cat couldn’t see him indicating his amusement at this ruse of unfamiliarity.

“Of course, Gaara-san,” Katashi replied with an idle flick of his fingers, about all he could move at this point, “Watch the ribs please. Actually – Cat, do you know any medical jutsus?”

“Just the basics,” Cat replied, and Katashi frowned behind his masks, mentally debating the wisdom of Cat carrying Gaara, but not seeing that end well _at all_ with how terrified the man had been at Gaara tending his injuries, not draped over his back or cradled close to his chest in position to do serious damage with ease.

“I can carry us with my sand,” Gaara said flatly, Katashi hissing as he carefully tended to a deep cut in his side, still bleeding sluggishly where the armor couldn’t divert it entirely to bruising. Cat trembled but didn’t object, also on his last legs from the tremor in his legs he was struggling to stand through.

“Much appreciated Gaara-san, do you know the way to Suna from here?” Gaara nodded needlessly, and Katashi continued to pretend he was in charge, saying, “Stop at the cliffs. There is no need to cause alarm by our arrival and patrols should come out that far.”

“By then I will recover enough energy to run ahead,” Cat offered and Katashi nodded agreeably, understanding it was useful and would get Cat away from Gaara before he had a complete panic attack.

“Then Gaara-san, if you could leave the healing to Cat and start us on our way?” the nod was unnecessary, he felt the chakra pulse out of him and the sand shift around him. Cat dropped to his knees beside him and put his hands on Katashi’s side, trembling easy to feel now. Katashi carefully reached to wrap a hand around the older man’s wrist, “Easy,” he murmured, “Take it easy. We’ll be fine.”

Cat nodded once, clearly not agreeing but knowing there was nothing else they could do, and starting to catalog his injuries to heal the more serious ones first, or at least get them started. “Status on the others?” he asked, needing something to keep his attention beyond the clear bright too-bright sky because otherwise he was going to fall asleep and that would not be good for Cat’s leashed terror.

“Temari-san and Kankuro-san were recovered, mild injuries. One nin captured for interrogation, others dead. Lion was killed. Mantis was injured, possibly critical. Ox and Quail were in fighting shape” _oh yes how helpful, fighting through broken bones was a must in ANBU_ “Raven was critically injured. Tiger also had minor injuries and mild chakra exhaustion.”

Katashi hummed lightly, then hissed as cracked ribs fused back together properly, “How many soldier pills have you had, Cat-san?”

“One, sir.”

“Will you be sufficiently recovered when we reach Suna to go for aid?”

“Yes sir!”

There was no further need for conversation and Cat soon stopped his feeble iryo-jutsus, having done the best he could without exhausting himself. Katashi kept his gaze on the blue sky above him and tried to keep himself from thinking about Takeshi’s fate – critically injured had its own niche in ANBU, not the same standards as other shinobi, so he knew that it didn’t look good.

Nine extra weeks, that was all that was _it_ kami he could lose him now after all that after everything he would still lose his friend-center-partner- _Takeshi_ kami why bother then, nine weeks, nine pathetic weeks – _worth it! Worth every second don’t you dare pretend it wasn’t you’d do it all again for those nine pathetic weeks nine weeks of Takeshi-friend-partner-comrade-everything alive alive who cares nine more weeks was_ everything.

“I wonder what his happening in Konoha right now?” he murmured aloud, idly, seeking distraction and his mind greedily latched onto it and he was able to quietly pass out in peace.

***===***pagebreak***===***

“So nothing taking you towards Suna?” the blonde child asked his companion, where they were sitting around a table in a run-down apartment that you would never guess was one of the most secure places in the Nations (recent development, nine weeks to be precise).

“Sandaime-sama is keeping an eye out, and no. At some point he will simply fabricate one but for now we need to lie low and get your training up. Orochimaru’s bases are being investigated, slowly, but the best opportunity for that will be the chuunin exams.”

“And we’ll have to deal with Tobi – crap how are we going to find that guy? Gah. I’ll get to work on the Danzo angle then – we just need some proof for Root, right? Then jiji will get out of the way?”

“Maa Naruto, if he does not then we will arrange it around him, Danzo needs to go.”

“It’s too damn bad we missed the massacre, but since we weren’t even planning on this much – not complaining.”

“Not complaining at all. Heard you scared the living daylights out of a certain ramen-stand owner?”

“Kaka-sensei! Ichiraku is _back_ how can I _not_ overreact to that?! It’s _ramen!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nervous about the fight-scene and the semi-stream of consciousness style I used for it. Never really written a fight-scene in detail before, let me know if it works?


	3. Meetings

Katashi woke up to pale tan ceilings and quiet voices only just audible over the muted beeps of medical devices. “So no one actually knows what the hell happened with that nin?” Kaoru was asking quietly, “They looked like puppet-strings but they were grey and black and just – ugh! Kakuzu of Hidden Waterfall? Who the hell comes from Hidden Waterfall?”

Silence – Ikku was apparently gifting her with one of his speaking looks, as Kaoru snorted and said, “Kakuzu, of course. Way to state the obvious Ikku.”

“He failed an assassination on the Shodaime Hokage. Big bounty on him too, taicho made good.”

“We didn’t do so shabby ourselves!” Kaoru pointed out, sounding decidedly smug (knowing her, more because she’d gotten Ikku to talk than anything), “S-rank for a Shukaku mission, A-rank retrieval, couple A-rank bounties to split? What are _you_ complaining about, taicho did good and we did too! Go team!”

There was just one voice and chakra signature – _the_ voice, _the_ chakra signature – missing and while he doubted they would sound so… so un-burdened if Takeshi were – if he were actually _gone_ but he couldn’t hear that voice or sense that chakra or hear extra breathing or lacking breathing or anything and good kami he was panicking over this he’d just woken up _really –_ “Takeshi!” he jerked half-upright in the bed before collapsing back with a groan, the two shinobi sitting in his room jumping to alert and he grimaced a smile at them before demanding, “Where is he? Where’s – “

“He’s here, he’s here he’s fine taicho! Well – he’s… he’s alive,” Kaoru amended, Ikku quietly pouring him some water before sticking his head out the door to alert the nurses he was awake. “Whatever that Kakuzu did it – it hurt his chakra pathways a bit, and they don’t – it’s going to take a while, to see if he can stay a shinobi. His internal organs were damaged when the string-things were cut, they were wrapped around them and the medics were really worried about his heart that was almost _netted_ by the things but they got them out with surgery and they think he’ll be okay, he just – he hasn’t woken up yet past a few minutes or so. So no chance to ask questions but he seemed aware and everything!”

“Alive? Alive oh thank – “ Katashi bit back his recitation and felt his surge of energy and adrenaline leave him exhausted again, slumping against the raised bed and letting his head roll slightly to the side so he could keep them in line of sight. “Your own status, you two? Not bed-bound I see.”

“Just some cuts and bruises taicho, nothing serious,” Kaoru assured him, flipping her purple hair over her shoulder, “Ikku here tried to get out of his medical check but I pinned him down for it, so yes we’re sure! Now – for the important part! How are _you_ feeling taicho? Cat was babbling something about a sandstorm and a tornado and it sounded like you had a _fun_ time out there! How many times did you have to kill him?”

“He had to die five times,” Katashi said, holding out his hand as a prop and ticking them off one by one, “The first, when we were all there before he attacked Takeshi. The second, during the localized storm, he was sufficiently distracted. The third, the sandspout. The fourth I was not responsible for, it was either Cat-san or Gaara-san. The fifth was a joint crushing using chakra charged sand. His head is sealed in my scrolls somewhere.”

“Oh we know,” Kaoru smiled, “Turns out there’s a bit of a bonus if some of his body can be brought back – well, it says body, but maybe they just need the head? So Bakemono-san was thinking about that being your next mission, when you’re well enough. Delivery to the Village of Hidden Waterfall! Wouldn’t that be neat? I’ve never been that far out!”

Katashi just sat back and let Kaoru’s conversation – a few simple responses and statements coaxed out of Ikku for good measure – wash over him. Takeshi and Kaoru were the chatterboxes of his team, or they had been until one had been killed _crushed pulped slaughtered no chance none at all stop it didn’t happen he’s alive he’s alive stop it right now_ – Kaoru-chan had never gotten back into her usual chatter, not while she was in ANBU. They’d just started coming back together when Ikku died and they were left alone to stare in silence at one another over a too-empty table and across too-quickly filled lockers.

He had missed them, missed _this_ and he was so unspeakably grateful that their screwed up time-space ninjustu had somehow sent them here sent him _this_ again. He felt a pang for his old-not-yet-then-now brother at arms Hatake because even this miracle was too late for him for his precious broken (yet somehow still half-alive and so problem causing) team-from-Before.

But he couldn’t bring himself to wish they’d gone further back so Hatake had his team, because it was a himself or him situation and Katashi was honest enough with himself to know that he was a selfish, selfish person and he’d choose _this_ team, _this_ chance, _this_ time over any other in his life. His genin team had been a broken, sad thing sent off to die in front-lines they were too young and poorly prepared to handle. His chuunin missions had been with Takeshi and then a disaster until he was pulled out of that hellhole by the same brilliant-bright-voice-chakra-friend-center-everything as always and jounin had been solo or Takeshi.

ANBU had been the first team they’d had since their genin days, and it was the only team they’d had that actually worked around their own bonds, formed around them in a net and not a line. Terror-stifled and heavy-hearted as these years had been for him they had, looking back and living now and good kami this was a miracle, been some of the happiest years of his life.

A group of chakra presences halted on the other side of the door and Kaoru and Ikku both turned to cover each other in case it were an attacker, careful to block him from easy view. It was a habit of many shinobi and the medics had simply grown used to it, letting their chakra be detected so at least their arrival wasn’t an entire (and then lethal) surprise.

Their defensive stances immediately shifted to respectful bows when the door opened and the Yondaime Kazekage stepped through, Katashi stiffening and bowing his head, murmuring with them, “Kazekage-sama.”

“At ease, shinobi,” the man said shortly, Kaoru and Ikku straightening and demurely moving to the side of the room, Katashi raising his head and leaning back against the hospital bed. A nurse came around to his side and murmured questions as to his status, requiring only brief answers while she checked various machines to fill out his chart. Nodding shortly to him, she turned and bowed deeply to the Kazekage before heading out to continue her rounds. With any luck she’d come back and tell him what exactly was going on with him and when he’d be able to get out of here – if not, he’d just send Kaoru after her.

Flanking the Kazekage were Bakemono Eiji, his shift-leader, and the perpetually masked ANBU Commander. Two other ANBU members of the Kage’s Guard were also in the hospital room, making it rather crowded. “Your report, Makiguchi-san,” the Kazekage said coolly, “Beginning from the gates.”

Katashi nodded shortly and began, report well-practiced and smooth despite this being his first full recitation. Years of giving rapid-turn-around reports paid off in spades as he was able to coherently and concisely give the necessary information without any of the odd tangents his own mind had sprung onto during the events themselves. Extensive practice kept his voice level and calm as he described events that had sent him-at-the-time into a roaring rage and he didn’t hit any problems until the sandstorm.

Katashi artfully hesitated, unwilling to imply he had actually generated it when he hadn’t built up to that level of control in his own practices, so instead he sent of a quick prayer and said carefully, “I am uncertain as to the exact source of the sandstorm. I have been working on a combination of wind and sand techniques with that end-result in mind, but as I have not yet practiced in controlled conditions or even combined most of the techniques yet, I cannot say if the sandstorm which occurred was a successful first case or something else entirely.”

The Kazekage only nodded and Katashi shoved aside his brief concern that Gaara had expected him to claim it entirely and reported with that in mind, because even if he had, the boy was physically six and considered psychotic – his report was automatically suspect to the highest degree.

He continued, careful to make sure he never mentioned prior knowledge of Kakuzu’s necessary five deaths, and reported as if he and Cat had simply kept trying to kill him until he stayed dead. By the time he concluded with his passing out, he was certain that he had spun it perfectly and, more importantly, simply enough that he would not have any trouble writing out the same.

“Upon your recovery, you will go to Taki and collect the bounty on Kakuzu as well as the bonus for body-recovery,” the Kazekage said after a few moments tense silence. “Details will be in the assignment. Continue your work with the sandstorm and determine if it is replicable, my youngest is interested. Your mission pay slips are awaiting your discharge.”

Nodding shortly, the Kazekage waited for him to approximate a bow while bed-bound before sweeping out, Kaoru and Ikku bowing him out as well. Eiji-san waited and gave quick instructions that Katashi could have recited in his sleep about turning in the paper report before departing, none of them giving him the information he actually wanted.

Turning to Kaoru, he asked, “Kaoru-chan, could you go find a nurse and get them to tell me how long I’m stuck here? And an update on Takeshi’s condition if possible.”

“Of course taicho!” she chirped, darting out the door. Ikku and he both exchanged tolerantly amused looks – she was such a bright presence, it was a strange character to have in the shinobi world and in Suna’s ANBU in particular. It was refreshing.

“How are things?” Katashi asked his last teammate, a man who was very willing to just drop into the background and subsequently very hard to get direct answers from. After they had worked together a few missions, Katashi had a decent handle on reading him and now, after a couple years together as team members, he could take Ikku’s complacent shrugs and quirks of fingers and brows as sagas. Takeshi and Kaoru still had trouble with it from what he remembered.

Ikku gave a half-shrug and flick of fingers, _Slow, injuries kept us down. Interesting rumors._

“Oh? What sort?”

Eye-roll, shifting weight and disinterested slump translated to, _Shukaku, you._

“Ah. Cat was a little nervous.”

Ikku snorted in amusement, half-smiling and shaking his head, _Of course he was taicho, it was the demon kid._

“Gaara. Name’s Gaara. Demon’s Shukaku.”

Head tilt, a wordless inquiry.

Katashi just shrugged uncomfortably, unsure how to say what had taken him years to realize previously, years and desperation. Now it was like he had woken up one day with a deep understanding of a reality that their entire shinobi world had a tendency to brush off and ignore outside of the few who really cared for jinchuuriki.

That was what he really liked about Ikku, the man could tell Katashi didn’t really know what to say, had meant what he said previously, and left it at that. He knew Katashi would explain when he could, when he had figured out how to verbally explain what he felt, but wouldn’t push it and frustrate them both at their inability to understand each other clearly.

He made a mental note to get him introduced to Gaara. A bit of exposure and the two could probably go days without saying a single word and miss none of the conversational interaction.

They sat in comfortable silence until Kaoru returned with a nurse in tow, Katashi informed he would be stuck here at least a day for observation, and then on strict rest orders for a few more days. He wouldn’t be going on that mission to Taki for a week, and they wouldn’t know if Takeshi could continue as a shinobi until he woke up and began physical therapy, which they didn’t think would happen for a few more days at least, though hopefully there would be some indication before he left.

On one level, he desperately wanted to know before he was sent out on a longer mission. On another, he didn’t know how he could bear it if the news was bad – _any news was better than dead crushed pulped gone shut up! -_ and he was required to leave for kami knew how long.

It’d have to wait though. It was out of his hands.

That night he was staring blankly at the ceiling, unable to sleep and tormented by thoughts of all the possible futures and all the ways things could go worse – they had been so close to winning. They hadn’t _been_ winning, but they’d had allies, had a plan, had _lots_ of plans actually and now suddenly they were back in time with the dead alive both good and bad and every step and breath they took having a chance to derail the entire thing and send the world spiraling into chaos and doom. He was back in a place where they lived with the threat of nation-against-nation war. He was back in a time where Suna was struggling to prove their worth and get missions from their own daimyo.

Not to say the future was perfect, far from it. Battles against a super-powered nigh unstoppable enemy, mass destruction and devastation sure – but he had allies. He had _friends_ – a shogi group made up of strategists and hobbyists from all over the globe, sparring partners that were fresh and challenging because he’d never seen their techniques before, brothers and sisters and partners and lovers that were from different paths, different lands different _villages_ and was it wrong to say he missed that? To say he was terrified that on a mission taken now he would face and kill someone he remembered joking and laughing with? That he would cripple a ninja he remembered as a fierce sparring opponent and a fantastic fighting partner?

If they destroyed Akatsuki, if they went after Tobi and Madara and the rest and did it before the Fourth War could happen, before there was some huge threat to unify the nations – would it ever happen? Would he be condemning future generations to endless cycles of wars and rise and falls of nations? Was there any way that Naruto’s vision, that _their_ vision, their _dream_ of a time of peace where shinobi from different villages could chat techniques over some drinks without fear could actually come true without such an overwhelming opponent to unite them against?

Sighing heavily, Katashi started his meditation _again_ , hoping this time it would actually take and he’d have a chance of falling asleep.

Before he could sink into a trance (try to at least) he detected a familiar poisonous-friendly-weird chakra and looked over at the door. Gaara entered, the wall to the next room parting before him and then reforming to its solid sandstone state, and raised an eyebrow at him, mutely inquiring after his health and why he was awake.

“Thoughts are running wild,” Katashi replied to the latter, “Should be out in a few days, mission a couple days after that.”

Nodding, Gaara used sand to help him get up onto Katashi’s bed, sitting cross-legged at his feet with a sigh, slumping tiredly, “That didn’t happen before,” he said simply.

“At all?” Katashi asked, surprised, “I assumed it had but you were knocked unconscious and Shukaku dealt with it.”

Gaara paused, looking thoughtful for a moment, before shaking his head, “I do not think this happened before at all. After Yashamaru’s death… I never actually trained outside the walls with Temari and Kankuro. This was the second time since our own return.”

“Opportunity, or planned?” Katashi frowned, “With Kakuzu I would hesitate to label this purely coincidental – I think this was an early Akatsuki attack. They are around now, the Uchiha massacre happened before. I cannot recall when they started actively collecting the bijuu though.”

“I cannot remember details either,” Gaara frowned, “I did not have access to and did not have much interest in the details of it until after I became Kazekage, and then we were more concerned with fighting them than in studying just when they started.”

“At this point I was in a half-aware grey most of the time,” Katashi said with a shrug, “After Takeshi was killed it was months before I truly start remembering details of missions and Suna’s status – I only really remembered major events and other nations were not my concern, I remained very much an internal-affairs shinobi.”

“Well that will have to change,” Gaara said, “We need to get to Konoha, or at least near it. I pushed on the sandstorm with my father in the hopes he’ll give you a longer-term mission so you can ‘practice’. That will hopefully give a window to contact the other two.”

“Agreed,” Katashi nodded shortly, before looking out at the dark midnight sky and sighing, “Shogi?”

Gaara smirked and waved a hand, sand forming a shogi-board and set, designs indicating the different sides. Katashi grinned and moved his first piece. This was a tradition he had sorely missed.

***===***pagebreak***===***

“Fancy meeting you here,” a familiar voice drawled a little over a week later, a solid presence dropping down to sit next to him at the base of a tree in the middle of one of Hi no Kuni’s many forests.

 _Not just any tree – Sasuke had died under this tree covering a retreat and redeeming himself with spinning red-eyes a cursed clan ending with kin-slayers like it always was meant to happen_ – Katashi brushed the memories of what-would-not away and instead simply relaxed further, loose-limbed and ready to leap into whirling blazing death. Neither shinobi spoke for a long while, ANBU masks at their belts in blatant violation of protocol, hita-ate from only nominally allied villages making the shoulder-to-shoulder scene surreal to anyone not of their time-never-yet-to-come.

“Been here a few days. Worried you hadn’t made it back,” Katashi finally said.

“Mah, had to finish a team mission and get a solo. That was a remarkably unsubtle flare you pulled.”

“Figured if you were here you’d keep an eye out but I couldn’t be too subtle or I’d convince myself to keep trying until I got myself killed,” he shrugged, his cyclopean comrade echoing the gesture before leaning back against the tree with a sigh.

“Hope you weren’t trying to vigorously conserve the timeline,” Katashi continued after another long, comfortable silence. “Because Kakuzu’s dead.”

A slightly tilted head and a raised eyebrow was his response, and Katashi just chuckled before leaning back against the tree’s rough bark as well, fingers lacing over his stomach as he explained the attack and the aftermath. And if he reverently spoke of a still-breathing still-whole _so perfect_ team, Kakashi was the best person to speak to for it, because he knew that the man understood and would have done the same had this worked out towards his favor.

“I am sorry,” Katashi finally offered, before honestly amending, “Or at least sympathetic, that you cannot have your team back.”

“Maybe not _the_ team,” Kakashi murmured, dark grey eye shut and narrow sliver of face peaceful, chakra a soothing crackling rumble next to him. “But my team now, my friends now, are nothing to sneer at. And I have Team Awesome, of course.”

Katashi snickered at the name Naruto had came up with for the four of them while they had been lurking in a cave with some of the Shinobi Allied Forces, waiting for their more exhausted members to regain some energy. “Of course,” he allowed, “Separated by leagues and deserts and borders, but always.”

“Always,” the Hatake echoed.

They should probably continue a knowledge-swap. He should probably be asking questions right now, about what they had been up to in Konoha, if anyone had figured out something was odd, if there was a plan, an inkling, of what they were to do. Discuss consequences of meddling, of what meddling had already happened, examine the possibilities they needed to consider-contain-pick-and-choose.

But the weather was beautiful, there was no one but them around for miles in all directions, and it had been a long, long time since they’d been able to simply sit peacefully in silence and let worries for the war, the future, their Kages (reckless, ridiculous, inspiring, everything) simply drop away for the moment.

Katashi was going to enjoy it while he could. Suna was going to be… tense, on his return.

_“Hey taicho,” Takeshi had whispered, Katashi standing in uniform at his bedside. He had been collecting his mission scroll from Bakemono-senpai when a messenger came in that Takeshi was awake, so his departure had been delayed by the hours he needed to reassure himself his friend was still breathing._

_“Hey senpai,” he replied, the old joke of alternating promotions bringing a weak grin to Takeshi’s oxygen-masked face. “Any word on recovery?”_

_“Should be full,” Takeshi said, “But I don’t know if I’ll stay in ANBU. This one was – was pretty bad.”_

_Katashi shuddered agreement, but didn’t say anything._

_“Been years,” the other man murmured, turning his head slightly to look out the window, “Kind of tired of it. Just – tired. Jounin might be a nice change of pace for us.”_

_Katashi closed his eyes against that assumption, a justified one, truly. There had not been a place Takeshi had gone that he had not followed, not until death had come for him and Katashi had been bound by duty-loyalty-habit to life until he found other anchors. But that was over now, for Katashi it had been over for years but for Takeshi this must seem a natural assumption to make._

_Not one anyone outside of them would understand – a captain follow his subordinate? That wasn’t proper, wasn’t right – but it was the way it had been since a quiet orphan had been claimed as taijutsu partner by a more outspoken fellow._

_“For you, yes,” Katashi corrected, and Takeshi turned to him with wide eyes, Katashi opening his own so they could lock gazes. “You should go for sensei,” he continued calmly, gently - please don’t fuss just let it go we’re still friends-brothers-everything just different paths please just accept it!_

_“I – I was thinking about it,” Takeshi’s brow furrowed, before his face grew curiously blank and he nodded, “Yes. Jounin will be a good change of pace I think. May your mission go smoothly.”_

_“May your recovery be swift,” Katashi said around the rock in his gut, darting out of the door and internally cursing. He had forgotten, memories softened by time, how dependent he had been on Takeshi – he had been captain, been taicho, but Takeshi had been so central to who he was and how he thought that the idea of their duo separating willingly into different spheres would have been – abhorrent. Impossible._

_But he would make it work. It would work and they would be team-family-partner-everything because they had to it just – he had to._

He should have left before Takeshi woke up, Katashi thought to himself ruefully. Now his friend’s reaction to their parting of the ways was going to hang over his head this entire time when he could just be enjoying the fact that he and Gaara weren’t alone in this, that his future-forever-partner-friend was in this with him.

“So, anyone on your end going to be told?” Kakashi finally asked, breaking their easy silence and bringing the relevant matters back into focus.

“No,” Katashi shook his head, “None in Suna would be willing to believe it. The future knowledge we have wouldn’t be something to use to purely benefit Suna, so I don’t think it would be worth the risk to try and bring others in on it. Konoha?”

“We informed the Sandaime,” Hatake replied, “He is helping us plan and plot – we needed someone to bounce ideas off of and authorize some rather odd-sounding missions if we wanted to get in contact with you. Speaking of, when are you expected back in Suna? Naruto would like to actually speak as a group, though Gaara is apparently unavailable.”

“Two weeks from now. If we can simply get a date worked out, or a range of them, since your Sandaime is in on it, I should be able to get Gaara out of Suna and arrange for my own mission overlap. He wanders the desert for months at a time at this point – it’s considered normal and accepted so it wouldn’t be particularly unusual for him to just decide to wander off.”

“That gives us some flexibility,” Kakashi mused, before smoothly standing, Katashi following him to his feet and they both secured their masks. “I assume you’re up for a visit now?”

“What I was hoping for,” Katashi replied.

“Well then. Race you to the south gate!”


	4. Perspectives

Sarutobi Hiruzen had seen a lot in his time as Hokage, to the point that he had honestly come to expect that nothing could truly surprise him. Startle him, yes. Maybe even blindside him. But not surprise him.

He should have expected that if anyone could, it would be Uzumaki Naruto.

Comfortably seated in a room he had not seen since Sakumo’s suicide decades ago, he was content to watch the future unfold before him. If anyone had told him that he would one day see a six-year-old command the respect and obedience due a Kage from two at least S-rank shinobi, he would have immediately sent them to the medics or T&I.

But that was what he was seeing. It had been disconcerting enough, when Naruto had approached him and used a code phrase known only to him now, one to serve as an identifier between a Hokage and their chosen successor. Hearing the boy’s unbelievable explanation had been worse, especially since there was truly no other explanation that was not at least as implausible.

When his prize ANBU, Inu, had returned from a solo mission in record time and respectfully requested the chance to personally check up on Naruto – a boy he had been perfectly content to observe from afar and read reports on until he became a genin – he had almost been resigned to the situation. Damn Minato for making him deal with this crap.

But, as he had always done, he smoked a pipe, sat back, and thought on the new development behind an inscrutable grandfatherly face.

Their reports on the future, on the enemy they had to face and the utterly _fantastic_ notion of a Shinobi Allied Force, almost made him lose his composure. Truly, Naruto would become the most “unpredictable shinobi of Konoha”. Their report that half their team was missing, was possibly in _Suna_ , was enough to make him actually pinch the bridge of his nose, especially at their joint insistence that they somehow get in contact with the two.

None other than the notoriously unstable jinchuuriki of the One-Tail and a no-name shinobi apparently in their ANBU forces at this point in time.

But he couldn’t deny it. Not when after only a few months of their new council (meeting first only through Kakashi’s mission reports, then in Naruto’s remarkably secure apartment, and finally in the Hatake clan compound, a place whose good condition he was certain Naruto’s command of Kage bunshin was largely responsible for) Inu arrived from a solo mission with a Suna ANBU guarding his back.

 _Makiguchi Katashi,_ he mused, watching the trio catch up on news in the Hatake’s main sitting room, _a surprising addition_.

He made it his business to know the up-and-coming shinobi of other nations. Most higher ranked shinobi did. It was interesting that this shinobi, this complete unknown, had come to be the Godaime Kazekage’s right hand and personal guard, entirely capable of holding his own against Hatake Kakashi, a shinobi who he now doubted was anything less than Kage-level himself.

When Kakashi had confirmed his allies’ identities, Sarutobi had actually had to look through his comprehensive (and highly, highly classified) bingo-book to find the nin in question. The man was listed as a barely promoted jonin of relatively mediocre abilities. Based on the entry he would have guessed that any of Konoha’s jonin could have dealt with him in a one-on-one fight, some easier than others but he doubted any of them would lose.

Obviously, the book was wrong or something had dramatically changed in the ten years they had skipped. He would put his money on it being a combination of the two.

“Tashi-nii-san,” Naruto finally wrapped up their meeting, filled with shorthand gestures and references that made little sense to Hiruzen so he simply waited for them to finish. He was learning plenty just by watching their interaction after all. “What have you changed?”

“Gaara-san has locked down on Shukaku, though I am uncertain how long he will be able to maintain that as the seal is apparently very poorly designed,” Katashi began, draped over a corner of the sofa he and Kakashi were sharing, porcelain mask resting with Hatake’s on the low table.

What Hiruzen found truly fascinating about the group, he decided as the report continued, was how easily they directed their respect to a six-year-old boy. He himself was noted and acknowledged, the Suna-nin bowing to him respectfully when they were introduced, but he was not considered the most powerful person in the room by any of them.

Oh Naruto gave him respect and affection, even acknowledged that in his current state he was Kage in knowledge alone, but the boy did not consider Hiruzen _more powerful_ than himself. The other two shinobi were doubtless aware of the same factor, but their body language and reporting style indicated quite clearly that it was _Naruto_ they respected and obeyed.

How Sarutobi wished the other child-Kage could have come. It was easy to see in brief pauses and glances to a conspicuously empty chair that they were feeling the absence of one of their own and he could only imagine the sort of dynamics he would have seen with another six-year-old powerhouse in the room! Fascinating, utterly fascinating.

“A sandstorm?” he interrupted after the report on the fight with Kakuzu was finished (marvelous, what advance knowledge and surprise could do) “How does the technique work?”

All three turned to him, but it took a flick of Naruto’s fingers for Makiguchi-san to begin (utterly _fascinating_ ).

“It started as an application of wind-chakra,” the shinobi began, launching into a detailed explanation of direct manipulation of wind-currents, knowledge of climate and a truly subconscious understanding of wind itself. Sarutobi was enthralled.

 _This_ was the shinobi who had risen to right-hand and personal guard. _This_ was a nin he would pit against the best Konoha had to offer with even odds. He hadn’t seen it before – he had known, had understood, that there was something in this shinobi that kept him in Naruto’s ‘Team Awesome’, but he had not _believed_. Remarkable, truly remarkable. A marvelous ability, dropping into obscurity like that so much so that even someone who _knew_ of his status and relative strength would think it was affection or some bias that gave him the ratings.

Formerly bland features – symmetrical enough, but nothing remarkable – were animated and alive as he answered Sarutobi’s questions and indulged in theoretical sidelines that he hadn’t had anyone to enjoy with since Orochimaru had defected. Dark eyes gleamed with a true _passion_ for jutsu creation and discovery, unassuming posture straightened and drawing the eye to a form apparently designed to lounge and blend and disengage.

Listening to descriptions of days, weeks, months, _years_ spent to perfect one aspect to gain utter control of a single shard – Sarutobi wanted to laugh. He wanted to rejoice, to mourn to bitterly curse the fate that had landed this man in _Suna_ when he had so desperately been hoping that someone with that same creative spark and passion (tempered by compassion, by loyalty to the whole, unlike his wayward student-son) would wind up in Konoha.

Naruto had come close, even as a true child, but he had not been motivated enough except by pranks. It was a promising start, he had hoped, but the child who didn’t simply want big and flashy jutsu was a rare find indeed. But fracturing one’s own perception through grains of _sand_ to expand a sensors range? Rising from chuunin to jounin within a year of being held prisoner for months and tortured for most of it? Going from raw jounin to ANBU Captain within a year?

Maybe those ten years had been important to his development of these advanced Kage-killing jutsus, had been important to building his repertoire, his confidence, but they hadn’t been the start, the beginning, of this man’s rise.

And as much as he wanted to curse at the luck which had given this man to Suna, he wanted to praise kami and thank them _all_ for giving him the chance to meet him. Because from what they said, he had died before he had the chance and wasn’t _that_ a bitter pill to swallow.

He was watching the future unfold in front of him, and it was a fascinating place indeed.

***===***pagebreak***===***

“So, that went rather well,” Naruto said, sprawling across his chair after they bade farewell to the Sandaime Hokage.

“It did,” Katashi agreed, gaze distant and fingers twitching their way through aborted hand-signs as he ran through jutsu concepts. Kakashi was watching those aborted attempts intently, Naruto knowing his ridiculously smart sensei was probably able to recognize what Katashi was attempting to create and would be able to meaningfully discuss the potential jutsu with him after they finished their own planning session (to which he would also be a major contributor).

Sometimes, he really hated geniuses.

“Does your Sandaime have any restrictions on our actions pre-emptively?” Katashi finally asked, fingers still twitching but his gaze re-focusing on Naruto as he brought the majority of his attention to their coming discussion.

“He wants us to tell him what we are planning to do before hand so he can plan for the potential repercussions. We’ve made sure he knows that some things will be cold, so his reactions will be natural, but he definitely doesn’t want that happening all the time. Considering I won’t be much use as a freaking six-year-old, to get Kakashi out on appropriately loose missions we need his knowledge, so it wasn’t much to agree too,” Naruto outlined, knowing that the Suna-nin had probably already figured that out, but it was worth detailing in full without a potentially offended audience listening in.

“That jutsu is going to be marvelous when it’s completed,” Kakashi muttered, gaze still locked on Katashi’s twitching fingers but he visibly straightened and turned to Naruto, saying, “We need to crush Akatsuki now.”

“Explain,” Naruto said shortly, straightening in his seat and taking on a tone that was recognizable even in a childish tenor as a _Kage_.

Both adult shinobi straightened in their own seats and faced him, Kakashi reporting, “Kakuzu is already dead and Gaara is no longer killing his own shinobi – the timeline is completely off course. If we wait longer and simply try and maintain, it is not going to work out in our favor. What is the point in waiting? The old path _didn’t work_. That’s the point. We have knowledge of what would happen if we did nothing, of the _people_ we need to influence. Let us use _that_ knowledge to stage events and arrange circumstances to influence them appropriately, not just let things continue outside of our own control.”

“But we need the unification,” Katashi pointed out, eyes narrow, “How can we arrange a unification without an overwhelming enemy to face?”

“It won’t be a universal simultaneous one, like before,” Naruto said, “It will have to be piece by piece. Suna and Konoha we can arrange – we _will_ arrange, with our team as the forefront. But we can do it, like Kakashi said, we know the people to influence, the lynchpins. We can use that to change the world, if in a slower way.”

“So we will kill Akatsuki then?”

“Yes. But Tobi is our priority,” Naruto decided, “The sooner he is dead, the sooner the greatest threat is eliminated. Without him pulling strings it will be much simpler to deal with Pein, as I actually understand his motivations and beliefs.”

“We will want to deal with him first then, as Kakuzu can be brushed off as coincidence, but killing the rest will be difficult to accept as anything besides explicit targeting of the organization,” Katashi pointed out, “Do we know anything about his current location? And is there a chance the jutsu dragged him back with us?”

“…There is,” Naruto admitted reluctantly, “Simply because I honestly have no idea how this entire thing happened beyond a space-time technique gone wrong, well… right. But not as intended. It cannot be disregarded. However, I do not believe that he will make extensive changes immediately, even if he has in fact come back to the past with us, because, as you said, sensei, it wasn’t like things were going particularly badly for him in our timeline.”

“So we must deal with him promptly and decisively, preferably without letting him figure out that we too traveled back in time, if he has in fact done the same,” Kakashi concluded, leaning back in his seat, “It would be best to simply assume he has, in fact, traveled back in time for now. It will simply make us a little more cautious.”

“I concur,” Katashi said, “And from what I remember of Mei-san’s discussions, the civil war in Kiri is really picking up right now, with the bloodline users finally deciding enough is enough with the massacres. Tobi was involved in that, correct?”

“Indeed,” Naruto frowned, “He held the Sanbi under a genjutsu and was able to influence the Mizukage through that connection. However it would wear off if he was gone for long periods, from what I understand, so he is probably actually in Kiri.”

“So we need to go to Kiri, crush Tobi and build alliances with Mei-san all without revealing that we are in fact his enemies from the future returned to our younger forms, or raising any suspicions on the home front as to our changed behavior,” Kakashi summarized.

The three of them sat in silence a while before Naruto sighed heavily, expressing their thoughts quite succinctly with his single, “Damn.”

***===***pagebreak***===***

“Look, if he’s saner then we can go on missions sooner, and that means we can get promoted sooner and get away from him,” Temari said bluntly to Kankurou over their breakfast, “I don’t see why you’re complaining.”

“I’m not _complaining_ ,” the puppet-user retorted, “I’m _concerned_ and _confused_. It’s been months and not even one death – I remember slow periods before and they always ended in a lot more bloodshed all at once. I, for one, do not want to be around when he finally snaps again.”

“…He might have been satisfied with those kidnappers?” Temari pointed out, half hopeful but clearly not really believing it.

Kankurou just raised an eyebrow at her and shook his head, Temari sighing and looking down at her tea. The two siblings sat in silence in the morning light.

Their third sibling was crouched in the kitchen cupboards, listening intently to every word and torn between congratulating himself on managing to hide before they came in for their one regularly shared meal and lashing out in furious jilted enraged _grief_. His siblings were _gone_ they were as good as _dead_ and he had known that, had wept about it when he and Katashi first reunited, but it just never _stopped_.

He’d walk into the kitchen to get some milk and Temari would flinch away, clenching a knife to throw. Kankurou would start shaking when Gaara inquired blandly after what he was going to add to his puppets next. They’d tremble when he showed up to team practices, something he seldom did Before and did only occasionally now – not after how poorly they did when he openly watched the first time. He could watch from a distance and under suppression, then at least he’d see how they really could do.

They had been doing better too, at least a bit, but then that kidnapping attempt had happened and he’d faked a Shukaku release again. He’d thought – hoped – that being knocked unconscious without the demon taking over (and wasn’t _that_ an exhausting thing to maintain with daily meditation and that blasted muttering back) would provide some sort of catalyst, but apparently that had only (somehow?) made it worse.

He was deviating from the pattern, he supposed was the problem. Deviations from pattern, even one as disgusting and terrifying as his old one had been, were never a good sign in the old regime, only ever ending in more blood. So clinically, he could understand their concern, even approve of their wariness.

But he wanted his siblings back.

Gaara burrowed his head in his arms and decided to count chakra signatures within sensing range. He didn’t want to listen to any more. And tomorrow –

Tomorrow he’d go out to commune with the desert. At least the desert had never feared him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit shorter than usual, back to the Suna focus and (maybe?) some action next time, but exams are coming fast so no promises.


	5. Adapting

The desert sun beat down on him, even in spring the heat was nearing brutal, parching the earth and sending the wildlife scurrying for shade and shelter when the sun was high. The winds stilled, growing gentle and placid as the temperature gradient lessened and everything grew more uniform, and Katashi danced.

A small tessen in each hand, he bounded across scrub and over sandy loams, launching up into the blue-gold sky with a blast of wind, feet barely touching the ground as he reveled in his new-old- _his_ weapons and the warm heated harsh chakra of his homeland curling around him without any of the taint of demon the stench of blood the wrench of death and grief and destruction.

Well out of sight of any patrols, Katashi kept half his attention on any approaching chakra networks – there was a small den of desert foxes a few leaps that way, a quail covey behind that sagebrush, a snake darting across the sun-drenched dunes a bit further south. If someone were to come across him, he could justify his actions as practicing fine control of wind, working up to more precise control of the windstorm jutsu he’d been sent out here to master, but it would be a stretch.

Tessen and moves free of power, of force, focused on efficiency and smoothness – that would be difficult to justify as building up to a power move. He could do it, of course. He could argue anything when it came to jutsu development, or at least throw enough high-flying theories at his questioners that they would retreat in confusion unless he were truly unlucky, but he would prefer not to. That sort of knowledge would not be something the average ANBU Captain would pursue, and while he was working his way into the exceptional category, he would much rather choose the time of his advancement with care rather than by chance.

Besides being an indulgence, these exercises helped him smooth out his chakra flow – ninjutsu often used abrupt surges. Certainly, they were taught to regulate and ‘smooth’ their chakra before using jutsus, but it could be so much more if the right exercises were done. But they weren’t necessary, so it wasn’t taught. He hadn’t even realized it until Hatake had thrown a fit about his chakra control when he used a medical jutsu on him years ago.

A wolf’s silver silhouette flashed in the sun as his tessen twirled through the air, enhanced steel and thread woven into silk panels gleaming with a slightly unnatural tone as his chakra was channeled through them. These were legacy pieces, Hatake’s grandmother’s to be precise, and in their not-yet-never time had been a gift-bribe to work on chakra control with the Konoha-nin. It wasn’t an area many considered Sharingan no Kakashi an expert at, but that was only because the Hatake specialty had almost been forgotten except by ardent historians.

In the Second War and before, these tessen would have been priced above the last of the clan’s significant bounty. Hatake weapons and armor were second to none and it was a true shame that the last Hatake’s career had taken him so far into field-work that he was considered indispensable and had next to no time for projects like these. At least with the Sandaime at their backs he would have a chance to get their armor designed and worked on – going to Mizu without armor designed for that sort of damp would be a costly mistake.

 _Three days_ , he mused, slashing deep into a dune with a twirl of his right, diving through the falling sand and catching it around him in a short-lived sandspout, _to return early or wait till the last minute. Decisions, decisions_.

On one level – _Takeshi, Gaara, Kaoru-chan and Ikku – so many alive and happy and how could he bear to stay away from them one more moment he’d missed them so desperately alive he had to enjoy it now not tomorrow not later now now now –_ while on the other he had secrets and lies and false-truths and shadings it wasn’t a comfortable easy home anymore not with a solid goal with allies outside Suna outside his Kage (Kages? Once and forever or current must he choose?). Three days either way was a price, he simply had to decide which shop to owe.

He truly had needed that break, that _chance_ to just _be_ – without masks. Without worries about how his actions would be interpreted and how his teammates would react to slightly _off_ decisions. And if he had needed it, he could only imagine how much Gaara would need it – they had no convenient ally like the Sandaime, no convenient connection like Hatake and Naruto had to make any chance interactions relatively easy to brush off. It made things much more difficult from a collaboration perspective, but also from a simple mental health perspective the isolation and utter _terror_ that Gaara was going to be surrounded by day in and day out must be exhausting.

Strange, still, to feel sympathy, _empathy_ , for the demon brat, for _that kid_ as Takeshi had always – _did always, he’s alive still thank kami alive who cares if he quits ANBU he’s breathing_ – called him. It was not so difficult, so bizarre, in their future-past-never-to-come because he looked different. He had a growth spurt, changed his gourd design, his clothes – and smiled. Not often, not much, but he did. Just the fact that a smile was a possibility changed so much of the presence he projected.

But seeing Gaara as a child, recognizing that the demon’s chakra _was still there_ , not just his Kage’s incredible gift with sand (from his mother apparently, he’d never understood how that was supposed to have worked) it always took him a few moments to remember and react appropriately to how Gaara-future-now actually was. It was probably even harder on the child Kage for that reason, because no matter how good Katashi was at hiding things and being a chameleon, his fellow Team Awesome members had long learned how to call him on it. It was only fair, he did the same to them (though Hatake had taken some work, blasted mask).

Not to mention new hormone balances (or lack thereof) and the utter lack of any physical conditioning. Naruto-san (couldn’t call him that anymore, he was just a kid now) had been whining about it (actually _whining_ ) and how he couldn’t control his emotions worth _anything_ anymore and it was a damn good thing he was considered a loud-mouthed expressive kid anyway or he’d have given the entire game up with his almost constant hysteria at utterly innocuous things until he’d adapted.

Gaara-sa – _(kun-dammit!)_ had no such luxury, and Katashi had realized he’d done his Kage a disservice, not thinking of those potential implications and simply reveling in the fact that his team-family-everything was _alive_ now and he had _saved them_. He had always been one to react to situations, once a situation _happened_ with an immediate _need_ to respond, he could come up with plans and strategies, but without someone to prompt forward thinking with no desperate need, he was perfectly content to exist from day to day, mission to mission. It was an old trick from the war he had matured in, when thinking of the future was nothing but blood and nightmares, and not one he’d ever really grown out of.

He didn’t think any of his generation had grown out of it. Oh Hatake could plan battles and missions and strategies with the best of them, but he’d never actually presented them with a _goal_ to work towards. Naruto-kun and Gaara-kun _(ha!)_ had done that, had been the visionaries to see how the future could be how it _would be_ if they just worked at it. Katashi and Kakashi (ugh, the nicknames were coming back blast it _never again_ ) were the ones they presented the ideas to, who helped them brainstorm and think up ways to get _to_ those goals, but they never actually _presented_ the goals themselves. For them, surviving was a goal worth working towards. Living – it had never really been the priority.

The word, the idea, started echoing in Katashi’s mind, bouncing through his memories and flashing through faces ideas times where he felt like he really was, where he had been where _living_ and not _surviving_ had been the order of the day. His team-family of course, all memories with them, blood-soaked or laughter-ridden it didn’t matter they were so so _precious_ but there were others, with a blood-haired teen struggling to gain recognition and acceptance, with a trio of siblings that somehow survived _everything_ the world had tossed them and actually come out of it _whole_ and _loving_ and all of them had something in common, all but the latest few which he couldn’t decide how to categorize. After all, Team Awesome (that name really was awful) had only assembled under threat of global annihilation, did any pleasant moments count for anything besides survival?

Suna. They were all in Sunagakure. His harsh, scorched, tough-as-nails, fierce-as-sun _no mercy no thoughts you are a tool_ – his beautiful, miraculous home because it still _stood_ because they survived they _thrived_ out here in this desert in this hellish place that _dared_ them to do better. That _dared_ them to rise above.

So. That was that then. His three days would go towards his home. Towards his _family_.

Towards _living_.

===***===pagebreak===***===

 “Oh Raven-senpai!” Kaoru called, sticking her head through his office door, tone giving away her grin even if the porcelain quail mask hid it from his eyes. “Guess who’s _ho-ome_!”

Looking up from where he was reviewing reports on the origins of the Kazekage’s children’s kidnappers, he blinked at her for a few minutes before the question finally registered and he shot to his feet, hissing as his leg spasmed at the sudden movement. “Taicho?” he asked hopefully, ignoring Kaoru’s worried twitch as he stepped away from his supporting desk.

“Just entered,” she confirmed, “Bakemono-san requested we assemble so once he heard taicho’s report we could get our new orders.”

“Ox on his way then?”

“Yep, just needed to put his gear away, we were doing some repair work,” she nodded, falling into step beside him as they walked down the corridors. It was a slower pace than he was used to, but he needed that extra time. The medics had apparently missed some of the threads during surgery and they’d wound up giving him a blood clot in his leg – resolved and a more in depth examination ensured all of the blasted things were removed, but his leg was not particularly happy with him.

All in all, Ikku was already waiting at Eiji-san’s door by the time they got there, and greeted them with a calm nod. The three of them stood in silence outside the door, waiting to be called in for what Takeshi had a sinking suspicion would be their last true team meeting.

When he’d woken up, and really _realized_ how close he’d been to dying on that last mission (saving some kids he could hardly care _less_ about) it had been – alarming. Jarring. He had panicked, he could see now, panicked and decided to cut his losses and get himself and Katashi the hell _out of there_ before one (both) died saving _that kid’s_ life, or worse, keeping _that kid_ in Suna.

He should have thought it through a bit more, and definitely should _not_ have sprung it on Katashi like that and simply assumed he’d go along with it. Kami the look in his _eyes_ when Takeshi had nonchalantly dropped that “us” in there. He had been _terrified_ , even if Takeshi, half-high on painkillers and still suppressing shakes from his latest dance with death, could only recognize it in hindsight.

Fuck he should have known better, as it was he had been forced to resign from active ANBU for medical reasons and instead requested a position in the intelligence branch. In fact, it looked like he’d end up in internal affairs, which, while a position most shinobi wouldn’t ever want to touch, he found himself rather hoping for.

It meant he’d half-resign, become an ordinary jounin in all but reports to his superiors, and even get a genin team someday. Since Katashi had mentioned it, it was all he could really think about, and to his surprise he found he was looking _forward_ to it. He actually _wanted_ something of his future, had a specific _goal_ beyond ‘survive’. That was something worth working towards.

More importantly though, it meant he’d still be in ANBU and have clearance for ANBU operations, so they would still be able to relax in their own apartment and not worry too much about classification getting between them. That aspect hadn’t occurred to him until he’d mentioned his initial plan to Kaoru and she’d been quietly horrified (and not so quietly furious when she found out he’d told Katashi before the man left). Besides, with _that kid_ having expressed an actual interest in Katashi and Katashi’s jutsus, he didn’t want to be told some polite tale about Katashi’s death because of classification issues, he wanted the _truth_ so he would know just _who_ to plot the painful, slow death of.

A double-flare of chakra from inside the office indicated they were to enter, and Takeshi led the way, sparing a brief nod for their shift leader before pulling Katashi into a one-armed embrace, muttering, “Welcome home, taicho.”

Was it unprofessional? Yes. Did he particularly care? Not one damn bit. Besides, Bakemono-san had been the one to recruit them in the first place and had been well-aware of the fact that where one went, the other followed, even if that rigid partnership seemed to have changed recently without him knowing.

To his surprise, Katashi returned the brief hug before pulling back and letting Kaoru have a chance. Ikku and he simply exchanged nods, giving Takeshi a chance to reel in his shock without keeling over. Katashi wasn’t an absolute _stickler_ for professionalism and formality, but he was definitely a major supporter, and never returned Takeshi or Kaoru’s physical signs of affection (and even verbal cues, depending) when there were witnesses outside their team.

His death _pain as something crawled under his skin heading for his heart it hurt kami get them out!_ or near death, rather, must have shaken him, Takeshi decided. Probably not helped by his sudden decision to flee from ANBU like Shukaku was on his heels without any consideration for the precious family-team he was going to leave behind, he admitted.

“So, my pet team is breaking up at last,” Bakemono-san said finally as their greetings concluded, the four of them standing at attention (or an approximation, in Takeshi’s case) in front of his desk.

Takeshi felt the slight tremor in Katashi, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, and wanted to glare at the shift-leader for implying that they were going to be permanently separated or something ridiculous (he firmly ignored the whisper that he had been the one to put that idea in his head). Eiji-san must have caught it anyway, or maybe noticed Katashi’s well-hidden distress, and shook his head, “No, no. You are all still my ANBU. But you will join the regular rotations again, rather than being a rigid all-purpose team. Unfortunately, it was rather nice to have a near one-size fits all solution to our problems.”

Katashi noticeably eased at that and Bakemono-san continued, “When I had you build this team, it was with the idea of seeing just how a rigid team structure would work out. In most cases, it was a failure once a mission just out of their expertise was assigned, but in yours and Delta’s, it was a roaring success. Not enough of one for me to switch over the entire force – no, half our flexibility is in the mission-specific team selections, but enough for me to know that with the right people it can work. It has worked, very well, for years. And I plan to assign you to one another for most of your missions simply because you know how to work together so very well. But while you will still be listed as a team of four, it will be as a team capable of functioning independently.”

“Will there be any difficulties with this?”

“No, sir!” the three addressed barked, Takeshi remaining silent and wondering at the shift he could detect in Katashi – he was confident, sure of himself. He always had been, when sparring, when the blood was pumping and wind was roaring and they were blazing fierce challenges to a world that had tried to crush them but not in an office, not off the field. Takeshi had always had to shore him up, to brace him for dealing with people outside of combat and serve as a first line of defense against those who took his reticence for weakness (fools).

“Raven, you have been accepted into Internal Affairs, you will be issued detailed orders soon enough, but your main priority now is to recover,” Bakemono-san concluded, eyeing Takeshi thoughtfully, “Now you three are dismissed. I have a few more things to discuss with Crow.”

Takeshi choked back an objection, wanting to drag Katashi away so he could explain, but instead he joined his teammates in their brief bows and departed, heading back to his office to finish out the last hours of his shift. What he would give to be able to hear what was going on in there!

===***===pagebreak===***===

“Sit down and de-mask Crow,” Bakemono-san said, Katashi obeying reluctantly as those orders rarely preceded anything other than a very long discussion and he was tired.

Given, that was mostly his fault. He’d run full-speed to Taki to collect the bounty, then lurked for a few days until Hatake caught up with him, before lingering in Konoha until he was forced to leave. Even his three extra days in the desert had ended up going towards returning early and he hadn’t returned with anything less than full-speed.

“You have changed, since you volunteered for that Shukaku mission,” Bakemono-san said, leaning back in his seat and lacing his fingers over his armored chest, Katashi simply staring at him blandly. If anyone were to notice, it would have been Bakemono Eiji. The man was sharp, had recruited Katashi and Takeshi himself and kept them together despite concerns for their mission completion rates. More than that, he had been the one to choose Katashi for promotion to Captain of a squad after only a few missions.

The man chuckled at his lack of reaction, saying contentedly, “I always liked your chameleon trick. So. What has made you come out from the shade, hmm? Was a time I’d have to worry about breaking you if I broke up this team of yours, but you seem more than ready to let it go.”

“Never,” Katashi replied firmly, leaving it to Eiji to determine if he was referring to breaking or to being ready to let his team go. The older man simply shook his head, an amused smile on his face before he subsided into a more professional mood.

“Who would you recommend for promotion to field captain of your old squad?”

“Effective immediately? None of them,” Katashi replied bluntly, easily switching gears, “Ox is too reticent, there would be far too great a chance for misunderstandings. Even now Quail and Raven can have trouble figuring out exactly what he means, though seldom on ops. Quail is a better candidate, but needs some more seasoning. She will make a very good captain one day.”

“And Raven?”

“I assumed he was no longer in the running as he is switching to internal affairs and intelligence,” Katashi dodged, the raised eyebrow indicating the dodge was noted and not appreciated. Suppressing a sigh, he said, “Raven would make a fine captain, but if you are not looking for permanent teams I do not know how well he will do with it. He works best with people he actually knows, especially in high risk situations.”

Bakemono-san hummed thoughtfully, but didn’t say anything, simply letting them sit in silence for a while. Katashi waited patiently for him to bring up the next point. While he was tired, he wasn’t in any rush. Here at least, he knew where he stood. Much of the rest of Suna was far less certain.

“The sandstorm jutsu you were requested to develop. Is it done?”

“Yes.”

“Can you present it to the Kazekage at any time?”

“I will need a chance to rest and top off my reserves, it is still a draining move,” Katashi qualified, and his shift leader waved off the concern with an absent, “Of course.”

More silence. Katashi still wished he’d hurry it up.

“Very well,” the older man said, straightening in his seat and pulling some reports close to him to begin his work once more, “Dismissed. Your share of the bounty and mission pay will be issued tomorrow once the accountants are finished. Get some rest, it won’t be long until you’re asked to pull out that sandstorm jutsu of yours. By all accounts, the Kazekage’s youngest is very interested.”

Katashi nodded shortly and rose to his feet, placing his mask on again, Eiji’s murmured, “Merciful winds watch over you,” following him out the door.

He wondered if he should feel guilty about causing all these people worry with Gaara’s interest, but he couldn’t bring himself to care much. They would figure out he was in no danger on that front eventually.

Knowing that the others would still be on duty, he went instead to their lockers and lounge, changing into the clean clothes he stored there after a desert-brisk shower and shrugging into his jounin vest easily. His scrolls went on under his burnoose and he soon found himself running across the roofs, some ryo in his pocket to pick up some take-out on the way to the apartment. He had no motivation to actually prepare food right now.

He entered through the front door (not all shinobi broke out in hives at the thought) with his boxes stacked neatly in one hand, security measures peeling back to allow him entry. He’d have to improve them, now that he had actually worked with true sealing masters he could see the gaping holes they’d left in their network. Another thing to figure out how to excuse.

A step into the apartment and he could sense a shift in the usual background chakra – a shift coming from his own room. Well, at least those were personally secured, he wouldn’t have to justify that sort of masking seal combination from his teammates. Toeing off his sandals, he rapped on the shut door and shoved it open, golden-poison chakra now recognizable, and he raised an eyebrow at the sprawled child on his futon.

“Gaara-san?” he asked cautiously, idly stirring sand indicating he was in fact awake, “Is everything all right?”

“They won’t let me sleep. I left a sand-standard bunshin combo to wander the desert so I could sleep,” Gaara replied, voice muffled as his face was still buried in a spare pillow. “Apologies for intruding on your seal schema.”

“Maa, no need for concern,” Katashi shrugged, slipping into his room and shutting the door behind him. He dropped down to sit by the bed, leaning against the futon and holding up his boxes of food and two sets of chopsticks (he always grabbed extra) “Hungry?”

“Ayame-san’s sand dumplings?” Gaara perked up, shifting to sit next to him with a yawn, “I’d know that smell anywhere.”

“Just for you,” Katashi lied, the child kage snorting and accepting the chopsticks and a box. They sat in comfortable silence, eating out of each other’s boxes for variety and habit, before Gaara finally asked, “So how did the mission go?”

“Very smoothly,” Katashi smiled, “I met the Sandaime.”

One thin eyebrow raised and Katashi just chuckled, continuing obligingly, “We were correct – both Kakashi-san and Naruto-san traveled back with us. For the sake of getting things done, they brought in the Sandaime Hokage, who is quite supportive of our mission. That will make arranging things on their end much easier. Currently we’re planning on another meeting in four weeks – so if you can wander the desert and I can volunteer for a solo mission, we’ll be set. Otherwise I might have to be set to monitoring you and that will be a bit more difficult for us to simply vanish on.”

Gaara hummed thoughtfully around a mouthful of dumpling, but made no other comment and they finished their shared meal in silence. Empty take-out boxes stacked at his side, Katashi finally continued, “Most of our long term plans should wait till that meeting with all of us – we may have to change things and everything was very tentative when I left. But one thing I must do now is apologize for allowing myself to be so caught up in the current moment that at times I forgot what we have done.”

His kage gave his odd near silent laugh, shaking his head and looking up at Katashi, dark circles under his eyes much worse than they were in the future, “Your family has been returned to you. I cannot find fault with your actions these past weeks. I would do the same.”

“Because yours was taken from you at the same moment mine was returned,” Katashi replied calmly, returning the look, “They are as gone to you as my family was, and I understand that blow. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be here, to see them-yet-not. Mine died much as they are now. Yours – no. Yours died far different and now it is like it never happened.”

“They’re scared of me,” Gaara rasped, looking away and staring at a corner of the room, arms wrapping around himself, “I thought I could change it faster, could just – we’d just become family again. But they’re still scared they’re just – they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. They’re so _scared_. I can’t even watch them practice with Baki-sensei because they spend the whole time cringing I just – we were making some progress, I thought. When the kidnapping happened. But it’s gone, if it was ever there. They just want to get promoted to jounin and off my team – our team.”

Katashi hesitated briefly (he’d never really dealt with children before and non-sexual physical affection was somewhat foreign to all of them, even the hug-happy Naruto) before pulling Gaara onto his lap and wrapping his arms around the small (so small, so fragile) redhead, resting his chin in the boy’s hair. Gaara stiffened in surprise, slowly relaxing into his hold while Katashi said quietly, “Naruto-san noted that his emotions were very difficult to control and only his reputation as a loud-mouth weirdo kept him from entirely giving away that something was wrong. Even Hatake-san admitted to feeling emotionally off-balance, though for him and me it is most likely because of the sudden resurrection of so many of our comrades more than strange hormone adjustments and de-aging.”

“I had noticed something was wrong, but I was uncertain if that was simply me being sane and a child again, or a consequence of an altered mental state. It is not like I had anything approaching a normal childhood emotional experience to compare to,” Gaara admitted, formal and advanced vocabulary sounding very bizarre in a six-year-old’s voice.

“Well it seems it is normal – for our situation at least,” Katashi appended wryly, Gaara chuckling at the oxymoron. A normal time-traveling experience, yes that made perfect sense.

“So – a meeting in four weeks?” Gaara asked, pulling away while Katashi nodded. “I will go wandering around then, meet you towards the northern spring. I’ll make sure to lose my tails first.”

“Figure I can volunteer for a mission at that point – now that my team is breaking up it’ll be easier to swing solo missions with flexible time-frames,” Katashi shrugged, a thought occurring to him on Gaara’s problem with his siblings that he hesitated to recommend, but knew he should at least explain.

“As for Temari and Kankuro – it might be possible to at least re-establish an equilibrium if you use your former reference to Shukaku as ‘mother’ – a mother wouldn’t hurt her children after all, and they _are_ your siblings,” he said cautiously.

Gaara grimaced and nodded reluctantly, “I thought of that, and planned to go through with it initially, the problem is that if I establish now that I still think of Shukaku as my mother, it will be much less believable that I suddenly just switch mentalities and lose all vestiges of madness when the Konoha incident occurs.”

“It should be possible to lead them to that conclusion easily enough, without explicitly stating it,” Katashi pointed out, “And to be honest, the general populace had very little idea that Shukaku was considered to be your mother, even among the shinobi. All they knew was that you’d gone to Konoha and come back changed. And in the spirit of that honesty, half of the reason you were accepted so readily after that invasion failed was because we were so very desperate to build ourselves back up after that mistake.”

Gaara’s expression had tightened with displeasure, but he only nodded, murmuring, “I know. But I hope to change that without such circumstances.”

“I will do all that I can, Kazekage-sama,” Katashi replied, tiredness creeping up on him again, “Between the two of us – I’m confident it can be done.”

“But how long, is the real question,” Gaara pointed out sourly, before shaking it off and continuing, “My thanks for the food and comfort, Katashi-san. This may become a regular thing if they continue not letting me sleep.”

“My door is always open to you,” Katashi replied promptly, still somewhat taken aback by the complete _sincerity_ of his offer – the demon child, always and truly welcome within his most private domain. Unbelievable just twelve short weeks ago.

The small Kage simply smiled, a small, honest thing, in the face of that offer, before departing through the walls. Katashi was confident that Gaara would not be detected and there would be no indication beyond their own memory that he had ever been lurking within these four walls. Stealth would never be a strong point for the pint-sized Kage, but he was more than good enough to fool anyone monitoring them, especially in a place so sand-drenched as Sunagakure.

Katashi had just taken his take-out containers to throw away and was looking forward to some actual _sleep_ when the seals on the door flared and deactivated, Takeshi and Kaoru tumbling in with Ikku calmly following. Suppressing a sigh, he smiled at the three of them and laughed as his two teammates grabbed him into a hug again. Tired as he was, he’d have to be unconscious to ever pass this up.

===***===pagebreak===***===

It was a couple of hours later and Kaoru had dragged Ikku out, supposedly for a ‘night on the town’ but in reality because she was a marvelous, marvelous person and realized that Takeshi needed some time to talk to Katashi alone. Sitting across a shogi board from his oldest friend, Takeshi couldn’t help but marvel again at the changes in him – they were small, slight, but so very obvious.

“You’re happy,” Takeshi said finally, making his move both on the board and in this conversation, “You’re – you’re honestly happy. Katashi, I honestly worried you never would be.”

His friend looked up from the board, the usual muted blandness in his eyes before it suddenly melted away and he honestly _smiled_ : Takeshi could count on one hand with fingers left over the number of times he’d seen that expression! “I am,” the other man murmured, picking up a piece and moving it with a quiet _click_ , “I suppose I’ve simply realized how… fortunate. I am.”

“Fortunate?” Takeshi frowned, examining the board in an effort to stall for time as he tried to pick apart just what his friend was talking about. Katashi had never been one to be optimistic – he had always been a depressingly pragmatic individual, if not darting to the side of pessimism. When they’d first met, Takeshi had immediately gravitated towards the other orphan of the class, not expecting that he’d honestly become _friends_ with the stand-offish boy.

It had been a battle and a half to get Katashi to even admit that they were friends, not just teammates – looking back he realized that Katashi had known it for almost as long as he had, but he’d been very unwilling to say anything. Hells, that pattern continued to now, getting answers out of him on anything beside purely shinobi matters could be like pulling teeth.

“I have a team I love, missions enough to keep me interested and us all fed, and you’re _alive_ ,” Katashi breathed the last with a reverence that was honestly disturbing.

“It was – it was that bad? When I went down?” Takeshi asked, not needing the drawn expression and white knuckles to know that his question had triggered something dark in his friend – the sudden surge in chakra was enough to let him know that without visual cues.

“I can’t – “ Katashi shuddered, shaking his head and only repeating it, “I can’t.”

“Easy, taicho,” Takeshi murmured, quickly shifting around so he was sitting next to him with an arm draped around the other man’s shoulders, “Don’t have to. I’m here – and in IA now, so hey, my life expectancy just went up.”

Katashi collapsed against him and Takeshi frowned, this was not normal. Sure, Katashi wasn’t so stiff when it was just the two of them, or even the two of them and Kaoru, but he was a very reserved individual by nature so for him to be this blatantly _needy_ was… alarming. Hell, the psych group had _warned_ him, Bakemono-san too, that Katashi and he were worryingly codependent, Katashi on him more so than the other way around, but he hadn’t really believed it.

He still didn’t, not to the extent they worried about. They didn’t know Katashi like he did – Katashi genuinely _loved_ Suna, loved everything about the place. Takeshi knew that if he died, it would be bad. Now, he knew that it wouldn’t just be bad, it was entirely possible that Katashi would break from it, but he wouldn’t be shattered. He’d be able to piece himself together again and continue on. Maybe not happy, certainly not whole, but he’d continue on and maybe one day he’d find something else to latch onto, to live for, besides their sometimes hellhole of a home.

Shit, if he hadn’t known how much Katashi had loved this place, he’d have ditched with him ages ago. He’d been tempted, after that mission gone wrong where they’d abandoned Katashi to die in enemy hands. It had been hell, working and working to get a bare chance to get him out and then to know that he would be _reprimanded_ for it when he got there? It was only Katashi’s muttered questions about how long to Suna, how far to the desert, that had convinced him he needed to return instead of running the other way and offering their services to anyone that could get them the hell _out_ of the elemental nations.

Suna was not a kind place. Not for anyone, but especially not for geniuses.

He knew what his friend was, the kind of brain that was hidden away behind awkward self-confidence issues and usually rigid propriety. Give the man a jutsu concept and he’d have something whipped together in a couple of days – but doing that was _dangerous_ , so very risky. After their first jutsu in the academy – a basic kawarimi, nothing impressive – Takeshi had known. He’d had trouble with it and Katashi had offered to help him with it, getting bored while he practiced and modifying the thing with tweaks of hand-seals and altered chakra regulation until he could change the color of the sand he arrived with.

It was a small thing, a stupid thing, but it had scared the crap out of him. He still remembered telling Katashi what that meant, what it might _imply_ about him, that he could do such a thing and they had vowed to never let _anyone_ find out about it before they could protect themselves. They had known what happened to geniuses, everyone had heard about geniuses from clans, from the academy, getting thrown into the war and spat out worthless husks, burnt out and dead to everything by the time they were ten.

Thankfully, Katashi had always had a knack for blending in, for hiding his talent behind mediocrity, so it hadn’t taken much work for it to seem like he was just as average as he pretended. Kami’s sake, sometimes even Takeshi forgot the kind of talent his friend possessed.

“Why are you doing this?” he finally asked, Katashi having pulled away to grab them both some tea. He quickly hobbled over to the table and sat down, repeating the question while Katashi gathered supplies, “Why are you giving the game up? Putting away the masks? Katashi it’s – it’s _dangerous_ what you’re doing. _That kid_ was interested in your jutsu Katashi, he was actually _interested_ – why are you risking it?”

“…I’m tired,” Katashi said, setting a cup of tea before him and sitting down across from him with his own cup. “Of faking, of pretending I can’t _see_ so many _better_ ways to do things. I just – You say I’m happy. And I am – I’m working, I’m _challenging_ myself – I know. I know it’s worrying, that it’s scary but Takeshi – I need you to trust me when I say that he is not a threat to me.”

“He? You mean – you mean that kid? Gaara-san? How is he _not a threat_ Katashi, he’s the bloody _demon –_ “

“No,” Takeshi froze at that tone, an utterly implacable _flatness_ that was so foreign to his friend, a hard look on Katashi’s face and he continued, “He is a jinchuuriki. A poorly sealed one, initially convinced that the voice in his head was his mother, a mother who was the only one who loved him and craved the blood of innocents. But he is not a demon. He is a demon’s host. It may be a fine distinction to you, but it is one that must be made.”

Takeshi stared blankly, struggling to come to terms with what was happening here. This was a dramatic shift in the dynamic – strange enough when Takeshi had mentioned resigning from ANBU and Katashi hadn’t immediately jumped to follow him ( _stupid, stupid, how could he have expected that?_ ) but this? Katashi actively _refuting_ him in a judgment call outside of a mission?

“You thought I was dead,” Takeshi murmured finally, it was the only thing that made sense. “For those hours, you thought I was dead.”

A pained expression crossed Katashi’s face and he looked down at his cup, Takeshi finally feeling like something in the world made sense again. “Okay,” Takeshi breathed, nodding, “Okay, Katashi. I trust you. I don’t – I don’t trust _him_ , but – but if you need me to just leave it be, I will.”

“I’m not asking you to trust him,” Katashi said, reaching out to rest a hand on Takeshi’s, grey eyes boring into his, “I – I can’t either, not now. But I think I can get through to him, I _have_ and if this sandstorm jutsu keeps people safe then that’s what I’ll do.”

“So it actually is a sandstorm? A full on solo-driven sandstorm?” Takeshi asked, letting his mind skitter off the implications of his friend being able to (even _wanting_ to) actually _get through to_ that monstrous child he would never, _never_ trust. At Katashi’s hesitant nod, he let a delighted grin grow on his face, crowing, “That’s awesome! Katashi! How could you not tell me you were working on that?!”

“I wanted to show you first,” Katashi muttered, averting his eyes but with a small smile on his face, “But it was an emergency.”

“Ah _man_ I have _got_ to see this – how did you do it? Is it wind or earth or – what? Come on! Give me details you can’t just leave me hanging like that!” Takeshi begged, weight easing off his shoulders when Katashi laughed and pulled out a ragged and much-worn scroll, spreading it across the table and showing him just how that brilliant brain worked.

Something had changed in his friend, something had _altered_ and as much as he tried, he couldn’t believe that his own momentary death was the sole cause of it – but this was still Katashi. Still his best friend, his brother, and he wouldn’t risk him for anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, um... I kind of suck at life - I definitely had this chapter ready for a solid 8 weeks, and then I just reread it and went, wait a minute, didn't I post this?
> 
> And I hadn't.
> 
> *Cough* whoops?
> 
> Anyway, here it is, hope it was at least sort-of worth the wait. Have some plans for the next bit and half of it written up already so we'll hopefully not have THIS bad a delay between chapters again! :) Thanks for all who've stuck with this story.
> 
> ALSO! The Hatake clan specialty being armor and weapon design - not my idea first! All due to the lovely attonranden and their story "What would have happened if?" on ff.net


	6. Consequences of Reunion

“Katashi-san, you made it,” Gaara smiled at him, sand creating fantastical designs and traps around him.

Katashi huffed in amusement, bounding over and across the shifting forms to land next to his Kage, “Of course,” he replied, “I, unlike Hatake, understand the importance of punctuality.”

“The mission?” Gaara asked, small smile acknowledging the jibe.

“Successfully completed in what would be record time if I were actually reporting accurate time,” Katashi sighed, prying his porcelain mask of his face so he could wipe the sweat off his brow – it kept getting in his eyes. “I left a Kage bunshin henged as the target – set to last for three days. I’m supposed to take my time getting back, so that will give us six before I’m expected to return.”

“Will the bunshin last?”

“Yes – it’s stabilized,” Katashi smirked, “Got that figured out at last. It’s a combination of sealing and pure ninjutsu alteration – got the idea from the Sandaime’s conversation.”

“Naruto will be very happy to hear about that, knowing him he’s going stir-crazy stuck inside Konoha, and going to the Academy no less,” Gaara laughed, “So. Where are we meeting them?”

“Safe house a few hours run away,” Katashi replied, going down on one knee and replacing his mask. Gaara sighed and clambered onto his back, arms wrapped around his neck, “Now this brings back memories,” the six year old muttered.

Katashi snorted and shot off to the north, sending his chakra out in discrete fluxes so he could track Hatake and Naruto when they got within range. It shouldn’t take long.

And it didn’t – after an hour two chakra signatures were pelting towards them, Hatake arriving with Naruto clinging to his back in a skid of dust. “Gaara!” Naruto cheered, the two much younger boys jumping down and Gaara quickly tackled in a hug. Katashi shook his head, Hatake laughing before they exchanged a quick embrace of their own, “Good to see you again. Sandstorm go smoothly?”

“Recorded and official,” Katashi replied, “A-rank, verging on S. They’ll give it S once our fan corps fails to replicate it. They were a little miffed with their corps-wide defensive power being replicated by one man.”

“Maa, they’ll get over it. What about that razor-breath jutsu you were working on, got it straightened out?”

“Was waylaid by something more relevant,” Katashi smirked, tilting his head and looking over at Naruto, who was still babbling something at a smiling Gaara, “Multiple blow shadow clones.”

That got his attention, the blonde snapping his head over to him and grinning, “You did it! Was that seal of ours even on the right track?”

“It was perfect – just added a flexibility layer and then altered the jutsu itself,” Katashi replied, “Your Sandaime gave me the idea. I’ll teach it to you, wrote it down actually, thought since it’s your signature you should have it, and then pass it on to your Hokage – I can’t create too many jutsu at once after all, this sandstorm is bringing me enough attention.”

Turning his attention back to Hatake, he asked, “Did you figure out that momentum redirection problem?”

“Ha! Did I ever!” Kakashi tossed his head back in a laugh, “Just wait till we get to the safe-house, I brought some arm guards so we can test them out! Come on Naruto-kun, let’s get going!”

“You just want to show off,” Naruto sniffed, but quickly jumped back onto Hatake’s back, Gaara doing the same with Katashi. “But this should be a cool demo, so I guess it’s okay.”

“Glad you approve Chibi-sama,” Kakashi drawled, Naruto’s indignant response cut off by a whoop of delight as they launched forward in a race.

Of course they were going to race, competition added spice to life.

***===***pagebreak***===***

“So how are you going to get to Mizu?” Hatake asked that evening, the four of them gathered around the table, map pinned across it by empty bowls. “The Sandaime is developing a list of targets for both elimination and information that are in that region, so I can feasibly be gone for a year, even a bit longer than, so long as my information is good. They’re piece-meal missions, should be easy to complete in a day or two – helps that most of the information is with regards to the civil war that’s going on in the first place.”

“Good,” Katashi frowned, before admitting, “I’m having trouble with it. All I can think of is Pakura-san and her mission.”

“Pakura – she was a good kunoichi, resurrected and very bitter, right?” Naruto asked, Gaara nodding and replying, “She had reason to be. She was set up – the mission was supposed to be a diplomatic one, sent to Yagura’s forces. She was killed immediately, never expected to survive. The Kazekage sent most of the more powerful and charismatic shinobi out that way – got rid of them before they were a risk to his power base.”

“Asshole,” Naruto frowned, “Stupid too, killing off his good shinobi like that. Where’s the motivation to become stronger if you’re going to be targeted by your own Kage? Anyway, what does that have to do with getting you to Mizu, does she have an escort?”

“No, it was a solo mission,” Katashi replied, hesitating before he continued, “I think though, if we stage it right, I can be sent out in her place. As the orders were to open negotiations with Mizu and didn’t clarify what side – I could go to the meeting point, avoid the ambush, and then independently decide that clearly, we wanted to ally with the other side that hadn’t betrayed us.”

“Would you be permitted to do that?” Naruto asked, “Or would you be called back to report?”

“Not if they thought he was dead,” Kakashi inserted, leaning forward and tapping Mizu on the map thoughtfully, “We time it carefully, you and I can both be there and conceal ourselves – was any evidence sent back as to Pakura’s death? A head or something? Or was it simply assumed as she never reported.”

“Assumed – but we’ll want a body, just so the enemy thinks that I’m dead and their mission is done. But Suna will certainly think I’m dead, I will, supposedly, think I’m fulfilling my mission, and when we’re done, I come back with an alliance with Mei-san’s group and am flabbergasted by the fact they thought I was dead and no one received my reports,” Katashi answered before summarizing thoughtfully, “That should work.”

“It will work, as long as we can get you assigned Pakura’s mission,” Gaara affirmed, frowning, “If… if I express continued non-malicious interest in you, it should raise your potential threat level to my father.”

“I’ll get to work on that razor-breath jutsu – that’s a horrible name, Hatake, thank you for getting that in my head – and supply it to the corps soon after you start with that. Hopefully it will kick-start something. If not we’ll have to get creative, but Pakura’s still more valuable than I am and she has a recently promoted genin team and is looking to take another – I’m one shinobi down, she’d impact future generations’ skills. He’ll at least think of that and consider it when he weighs which one of us to eliminate.”

“Creativity is more threatening than competence,” Hatake shrugged, “He’ll pick you, I’m sure. When was she sent out?”

“Eight months from now, I think.”

“Something like that,” Gaara agreed.

“That will give me time to get Mizu-appropriate armor set up with a disguise of sorts,” Kakashi nodded shortly, “Good. We’ll straighten out the best cover story when we meet in… eight and half months? That would be… beginning of spring, wouldn’t it?”

“Just after the equinox, yes,” Naruto agreed, frowning as he continued, “Communication between the four of us will become an issue at that point – right now we are paired off, but then you two will be paired and we will be isolated. Summons wouldn’t work – at least not the contracts Kaka-sensei and I have. One of you two should get a contract.”

 “What summons? And how are we supposed to get one?” Katashi asked dryly, “Randomly using the summoning jutsu is more likely to get ourselves killed than bring forth a useful and friendly summon.”

“I’ll ask the toads, see if they have any advice,” Naruto shrugged, “They’re a little more attached to the standard summons realm than Kakashi’s ninken. Now, in the meantime, who wants more ramen?”

***===***pagebreak***===***

Kaoru watched with narrowed eyes as her taicho kicked back on the couch, pen and paper in hand as he muttered to himself. He was very relaxed – it was unnerving.

“Taicho?” she asked, and he looked over his notebook at her and smiled slightly, “Yes Kaoru-chan?”

“Want some sake?” she held up the bottle and warming plate, taking his shrug as agreement and sitting down on the tatami mat across the table from him. “How do you think Takeshi’s jounin mission is going?” she asked, pouring out some to warm.

“Well, I hope,” the man frowned, worry crossing his face before it cleared, “He should be fine.”

“Yeah, senpai’s pretty good,” she agreed, not wanting to alarm him or make him worry more – far from it! Sure, she had expected him to be wearing a hole in the floor as this was the first mission Takeshi had taken without taicho there to guard his back in… hell, it had probably been years! But if he wasn’t, that just meant her job was easier. Takeshi had pulled her aside and been very explicit in his orders to keep an eye on their taicho while he was gone, orders she was more than happy to obey.

“Oy, taicho?” she asked, sliding a cup of warm sake over to him, “When’d you create that sandstorm?”

He sat up and slid down to sit on the ground across from her, notebook and pen on the table while he took a sip of the sake – good quality stuff. She’d saved up for it. He hummed happily and she sighed before taking her own sip. She knew it was too good to be true. Taicho was not a chatty person. He may have been unusually relaxed and cheerful lately (for him) but he had definitely not started talking any more or answered questions any more frequently.

“Years ago,” he finally said, and she was willing to take that, before he continued in a placid tone, “Finished it then too.”

Kaoru froze, cup halfway to her lips, before she set it down on the table and exhaled through her teeth. She knew what that meant – he’d been sitting on it. Sitting on a fucking badass power move for _years_ and only pulling it out when he thought senpai was dead.

Which meant he thought revealing that power move would put senpai at risk.

She’d heard the rumors, but hadn’t wanted to believe them. Powerful shinobi were sent out on risky missions and died, it happened. Geniuses went out to the front lines of wars and burned out, tons of people burned out in wars, wars were nasty and she thanked kami every day she’d never had to be in one, and prayed that held true her whole life.

But if Katashi-taicho had developed something like that _years_ ago, and that sort of talent didn’t come from nothing, he’d been sitting on it for a while. And been sitting on what were undoubtedly other badass moves too, for years. Because letting anyone know that he could come up with awesome stuff like that would put senpai at risk.

That meant someone was deliberately targeting the best and brightest. Maybe in wartime it was a coincidence, and maybe he’d done it then to avoid burn out and stay with his friend Takeshi-senpai, and then it was a habit. But they’d gotten into ANBU ridiculously fast – keeping on track with that, he could have shown off a bit, flourished more obviously. Not stayed an average ANBU; damn good, but not fantastically amazing.

She knew he was fantastically amazing, because he was _taicho_ , but others thought he was just a blah everyday sort, dumbasses.

But apparently he wanted them to think that. Wanted them to think him average, everyday, because otherwise he’d be sent out to die and no one would be here to take care of senpai. Or, worse, they’d both be sent out, because they always went out together, and senpai would die while taicho managed to live.

So many more things made sense now!

“So that’s why you weren’t so upset when he quit full-time ops,” she murmured, “And why you didn’t follow him. You need to go on missions without him, in case someone tries to get rid of you.”

“Best you not talk about that Kaoru-chan. I’ve secured the apartment best I can, but outside of here – talk like that is dangerous,” Katashi-taicho said, expression solemn, as per usual.

“Are you – “ she hesitated, “Are you going to pull out more moves?”

“I think I have to,” taicho said quietly, looking at his notebook, “If I make it look like it takes me a while, like I struggle with it… like it takes years to even come up with the idea for something like the sandstorm, much less master it – it should give me some more time. But if I just stop – they’ll know something’s up. A jutsu like that doesn’t just randomly happen, I very clearly put effort and thought into designing it. I’m working on derivatives of skills I had to use to get to it, that should at least keep them from feeling too threatened.”

Kaoru wanted to curse, to stab something, to cry. Instead, she just shot back the rest of her sake and poured herself another glass.

Someone – she very intentionally did _not_ glare in the direction of the Kage’s tower – was going to try and kill her taicho because he was a genius. Because he could create awesome jutsu, and loved the wind.

The worst part?

It made complete and perfect sense.

***===***pagebreak***===***

Gaara hid at the edge of the training ground his brother and sister had claimed for this morning. Baki-sensei was there too, having them spar with one another as a warm-up. He was a good sensei for them, and while he had never come to truly teach Gaara after the invasion of Konoha, meaning Gaara had few memories of him-as-sensei not stained with Shukaku’s raging madness, he remembered enough to guess that.

Watching him patiently deal with Temari and Kankuro’s rages and worries while still teaching them what they needed, rather than what they wanted, of the shinobi arts only solidified that into true knowledge and belief. The few times that Gaara came to team training – as in, actually showed up rather than lurking in the background to watch with a painful sense of hope – he even got his sand abilities involved in the spars and scenarios. None of them were remotely challenging with a lifetime of experience more than Baki-sensei was aware of, but they were innovative and fresh from the perspective of his known abilities.

But what he _really_ wanted and needed was practice in the more physical aspect of the shinobi arts. In the month they had waited to meet with Naruto and Hatake-san he had gone for runs in the desert – actual runs, rather than using his sand – and worked his tiny body as hard as he could. He had never, and would never, be a taijutsu powerhouse, but he could at least hold his own against a jounin level opponent in that time never-yet-to-come and he’d like to get to that point _before_ he was seventeen.

A flicker of chakra a few yards away.

Looking over, he was surprised to see Baki-sensei – but a more careful examination of the one observing Temari and Kankuro revealed it was a layered standard and sand bunshin, much like the ones he used to such great effect in side-tracking his ANBU trackers.

His was, of course, better since he had such an intimate control over the sand, but it was still a combination he now wondered if Baki-sensei had taught him in that first life. He had used it before the Konoha invasion, he knew, but couldn’t recall where he had picked up the idea.

If it was to be laid at this man’s feet, he owed him a debt.

“Baki-sensei,” he said, keeping his face as blank as possible as he returned his gaze to the man.

The jounin took it as permission to approach and came over, crouching next to him in his sand-shielded hiding place. “A nice vantage point,” the veiled man said, “May I ask why you observe rather than attend team sessions, Gaara-san?”

“They fight differently when I am there. They receive more training and advance further when I am not,” Gaara replied bluntly. “I want my siblings strong.”

I want my siblings _back_ he did not say, did not dare think anymore, because it hurt too much.

“If you do not practice with them now, they will be unable to use the skills they learn in the field when we are sent out, if your presence affects them so,” Baki pointed out, entirely logically and Gaara _knew this_ but that didn’t mean he wanted to set out to _correct_ it right away – he wanted to delay seeing them flinch, could anyone blame him?

If they went out on a mission and a flinch meant their deaths – _yes_. He would _never_ forgive himself.

He had earned their trust once, after years upon years of terrorizing them.

He could do it again. He _would_ do it again.

“Very well,” Gaara said, sand-wall collapsing and faint genjutsu he’d held over the construction fading away. “I would appreciate help in taijutsu, Baki-sensei. I have improved at holding my sand back from automatic defense for the sake of practice.”

“A good starting point,” Baki said, rising to his feet. If he was surprised by Gaara’s request, he didn’t show it. The veil probably helped with that.

Gaara took a steadying breath before following the jounin down to the training yard, hardening his heart to the flinches and stuttered movements of his siblings. He _would_ wear down their suspicion and their fear, he _would_ regain their trust and love and affection again.

He _had_ to.


	7. Arrangement of Coincidences

Katashi grimaced, flexing his hand experimentally as he strolled through the streets of Suna in his jounin uniform, hood down on his burnoose. The yet-another-solo mission had been… interesting.

It was barely a month after they had met with Hatake and Naruto, barely a month since Gaara had carefully started expressing ‘non-hostile interest’ in him and he had been purposefully caught murmuring about jutsus not yet created in headquarters.

And here he was, freshly arrived from an A-rank mission of the nastier sort, the bread and butter of ANBU, which had been… creatively mis-ranked, to say the least. The volume of surprises and intelligence shortages and simple _wrongfulness_ was staggering even if he _hadn’t_ already known of the Fourth Kazekage’s tendency to arrange for potential rivals to die. With that knowledge, it was almost nauseatingly heavy handed. _This_ was the man they trusted to lead their village, to navigate inter-village and daimyo-placating politics, the man that they had followed into _war_ because their village was _starving_ when it was almost certainly entirely his fault?

Katashi did not consider himself good at politics. None of the four of them really were, though Naruto had a knack for getting people to like him at least. But any _one_ of them could do better than this! Where was the elegance, the subtlety, the bare _twist_ of coincidence-too-far so your enemy only knows as they’re bleeding to death that it was _you_ who’d orchestrated their demise, making them feel insignificant fools as they passed on?

At least healers and medics could be trusted to do their jobs fully and without sabotaging him. While orders from the Kazekage were always to be followed, healers and medics were never issued assassination orders, not on a patient of theirs. So long as he received some form of medical treatment from them, they would not take assassination orders against him. It was a long-standing custom, even older than Tsunade’s initiative to give medics immunity on the battlefield, and one he could reasonably trust.

Given, that was only true if one had taken oaths as a medic and healer, which some avoided (such as Yakushi Kabuto, the triple-crossing worm) so there was no way to know for _certain_ but if he didn’t draw the line somewhere he’d have been crippled by that wound on his hand and he had far too much to do to allow that to happen.

And, given the full range of mobility he already had, with only a few twinges of pain that would fade in the next days, it had paid off this time. But with seven months to go before the mission they hoped for, it might not the entire time; he might have to start healing himself.

He hadn’t really trained as a medic until Takeshi had been killed in front of him before – and even then it had been purely academic until after the Konoha invasion when they were so shorthanded that even a theory only medic was put to work. Depending on how long it took to get to that point, it might be worth it to carefully reveal he was studying medical jutsu.

Or he would keep it in reserve and simply return from ridiculous missions unscathed, editing the mission reports as much as he dared.

That would be more threatening, without giving away a potential trump card. Very well, a preliminary decision was made.

He swiped his way through the upgraded security seals on their apartment – layered ones, he was proud of himself; the same pattern as their old seals allowed entrance, but it was only the _extra_ bits he had put in that kept an alarm seal on an armband from heating up and thereby alerting him. The alarms caused by his teammates while he was out were worth the fact he could now sleep on the couch in peace – it was a comfortable couch.

Naruto may be able to whip up seals on the fly, and be utterly ridiculous at creative linking of basic components to create something truly epic, but give him some time and a lot of paper and he wasn’t so bad himself. Hatake was better than him at using them in combat though – the Sharingan gave him an edge when it came to predicting motions that may interfere with a seal’s development.

The door shut and seals reset with a quiet murmur of chakra. Katashi finally let the tension in his shoulders recede and he made his way into the kitchen, intent on tea and food – copious amounts of both. Part of the intelligence mishap had been poorly sealed supplies, leaving him with his emergency stash of ration bars for two weeks.

It was not-yet-nostalgic for the days when they fled Madara with an army and the kages with ridiculous healing factors pushed off needed food to their people, guards following their example so they could occasionally blackmail them into eating actual food.

The things they did for their kages.

Needless to say, before he’d even come here, he’d restocked his emergency stash. He had a feeling this was going to end up being a pattern.

A teacup floated up under his nose on a stream of sand, Katashi blinking in surprise before catching it with a quiet, “Thank you,” following the sand with his gaze to a cracked open cupboard.

Opening the door, he raised an eyebrow at the sight of his six-year-old kage contorted among the bowls and numerous sake-sets (Kaoru collected them). “I can explain,” Gaara said, mouth twitching as Katashi groaned, recalling the many situations where Naruto had prefaced his explanation with that phrase. Needless to say, the explanations had rarely made sense.

At least the question of how he had gotten in there was answered, Katashi thought wryly, watching as Gaara’s sand carefully moved all the dishes out of the way and held them in the air while he slid out of the cupboard before setting them back just where they’d been. “I’m impressed,” Katashi said, “I didn’t sense you there.”

“Which is concerning,” Gaara frowned, “You are exhausted.”

“And hungry,” Katashi agreed, “Though I think this is more my subconscious recognizing your signature as no threat, which is still something that can be taken advantage of, but with Shukaku’s chakra still tracing yours, less worrisome than it could be.”

“Valid,” Gaara nodded shortly, “Sit down, I’ll make you something.”

Katashi briefly considered protesting, but his ribs did hurt and he really was tired. So instead he sat down on one of the stools along the counter and watched as Gaara used his sand to pull ingredients out and make tea even as he washed his hands and started to throw together a basic meal. A sand-held teapot poured a fresh, citrusy blend into his cup and he inhaled the aroma gratefully – there was only so much stale water one could take after all. And the sanitization pellets he had carried with him for emergencies (necessary again, what a surprise) left a strange aftertaste.

“So is there an explanation for the cupboard?” Katashi finally asked, after he’d drank two cups of tea and finally felt the last of his wary alertness fade. Gaara was here, and while that was a little odd, it was far more comforting – he hadn’t considered how exhausting it would be to have an increasingly hostile Kazekage’s regard while at the same time pretending ignorance. He really should have.

“We were released from training today, Baki-sensei was called in for a mission, and as I had been practicing katas and strength-building late last night, I was tired,” Gaara shrugged, “While I don’t need much sleep, it is nice, and I haven’t had much for the past week – they’re still worried about Shukaku escaping my hold. So I left a decoy to wander the desert a bit and came here to sleep – when I woke up I was hungry so I came in here to see if there was something that wouldn’t be missed when I realized your roommate was here and I hid in the cupboard I’d been looking through – then I fell asleep again until you arrived.”

“Not quite as ridiculous as some, but still a good story,” Katashi decided, “Which roommate?”

“Takeshi-san.”

“Ah. My thanks, he would have taken any hint of your presence… badly.”

“Yes, that was what I had figured. You think your other… Kaoru, correct? You think she would take a random appearance better?”

“Calmer, at least,” Katashi shrugged, “Which could count as better. And she’d ask me about it privately, Takeshi might mention things outside our security seals if he’s perturbed enough.”

“Less flappable?”

“More trusting that I always have a plan of some sort,” Katashi smiled sadly, thinking of his purple-haired teammate and her thoughtless devotion to their team and how that had been what broke them apart in the end. He sorely hoped that wouldn’t happen now, that their team parting by reassignment rather than by death would keep them together and somewhat whole.

“Ah,” Gaara said softly, the pair of them falling into a comfortable silence only broken when he slid a bowl of rice with fried lizard and eggplant over to him, a smaller one set in front of his own stool. A quick expression of thanks and they both descended on their food with single-minded determination – though there were occasional pauses of bliss, they knew what it was to go without any sort of flavor for so long after all.

A half-hour later they were in the middle of a shogi game, fresh pot of tea warming nearby. Katashi made his move, Gaara stalling for time as he asked, “How did the mission go?”

“Hm? Oh – disgusting. Very heavy-handed, the sheer volume of things that went wrong – utterly improbable,” Katashi shook his head, “Your father is an idiot.”

“Well, not a plotter, at least,” Gaara sighed, continuing quietly, “He tries, I think.”

“My apologies, Gaara-san,” Katashi murmured, correcting himself at the boy’s glare, “Gaara-kun, then.”

“No need to apologize,” the boy shrugged, a fluid and oddly aged movement, especially on a six-year-old. “I have read his papers, after all. It’s a miracle Suna managed as well as it did, honestly, the opportunities wasted – well. No need to weep over them now, most have already been made or will be no matter what we do.”

“At least we might spare Pakura-san, she was apparently a very good teacher. We need those,” Katashi said, eyeing the unexpected move Gaara made suspiciously.

“That we do,” Gaara agreed, smirking.

They made it through a few more moves when Katashi sensed a pair of familiar chakra signatures approaching the door. “They’re home!” he called, shogi board immediately disintegrating and reforming into Gaara’s gourd as the boy rushed towards Katashi’s chakra-shielded room and presumably out the window, calling a hurried farewell over his shoulder.

Katashi turned to greet his teammates with a smile, wondering if they’d ever be able to forego this odd separation of past and present comrades.

If he kept them alive long enough, maybe.

***===***pagebreak***===***

“So,” Takeshi said that night as they nursed cups of sake, “Kaoru-chan tells me you’ve gotten in something deep.”

Katashi raised an eyebrow at the girl, who shrugged shamelessly and said, “You’re sticking your neck out taicho, it’s only right senpai knows about it.”

“Senpai already knows about it,” Takeshi said mockingly, lips tight with displeasure, “What I don’t understand is why you’re _continuing_ it when we fucking lived our _lives_ to avoid this problem! And don’t give me that shit about being tired of lying!” he hissed, slamming his palm into the table, “It’s not _true_ you _liked_ being overlooked – you always thought it was amusing!”

“Or he said he did,” Kaoru pointed out gently, obviously a repeated argument then, most evidenced by the fact she faced Takeshi’s miniscule flinch without her own echoing gesture. She’d seen it too many times then, she’d known it was coming.

But Katashi hadn’t and he felt that flinch like a punch to the gut from an Akimichi – “I did,” he said, reaching over and grabbing Takeshi’s wrist, “I _did_ ,” he repeated, Takeshi meeting his gaze with an oddly lost look in blue-grey eyes. Fuck, he had really been worrying about this he _couldn’t_ lose Takeshi to something this stupid kami no not after all this – “I did.”

“Then why?” Takeshi demanded quietly, “We knew this was the cost, Katashi. We always knew. Why are you _doing_ this?”

“Because you were _dead_ ,” Katashi finally snarled, “Because you were _gone_ and the mission was a _failure_ and I wouldn’t let you die for something that wasn’t completed!”

Because _hell_ if that wasn’t true, Takeshi had died bringing the demon brat back and nothing there had changed until he came back Gaara from an invasion that had cost too much for too little, had cost him _Kaoru_ the last of their family the last of his _home_ and then he was given this _miracle_ , this _chance_ and he had abandoned his friend to lie bleeding on the sand while he raced after a kage he loved and adored that _needed him_ but he was still _failing_ in every way that really mattered to his patched together heart and could anyone blame him for throwing caution to the wind just then, when all he could think of was the fact _his Kage_ was in danger and _his brother_ was dying for it?

Besides, if the Kazekage thought he was going to win this round, kill this particular potential rival (ha!) and just move on to the next, he had another thought coming.

These were _his comrades_ , people he had led into a war, and fought and bled and prayed beside as their village struggled as their world shattered and he would not let some power hungry moron take them. Not while he still breathed.

“Damn it Katashi, I’m not worth that!” Takeshi cried, empty sake cup shattering against the wall as he stood and began to pace, “They’re fucking _after you_ Katashi! The Kazekage is trying to _kill_ you and if you’d just fucking _sat_ on it a while longer – “

“Until what?” Katashi demanded, rising to his own feet, “Until the next one came along, the next potential rival, and was sent to death? The next and the next and the next in the hopes that one day one would outlive him and take his place? Live my life choking down on moves that could _save people_ on jutsus that could _make a difference_ when the Kage sends his own shinobi out to die abandoned because he can’t take a challenge?”

“Until he’s dead and you’re safe!” Takeshi snarled back, “Until showing off brilliance isn’t as good as a _death sentence_! Damn it Katashi, you’re just going to _take_ this?”

“No,” Katashi growled, frustration-grief-longing-anger a burning _rage_ that his friend was being upset by a bastard of a worthless man who dared to kill those who would die for him in not-even-elegant plots, “I’m going to _break him_.”

Suddenly, things unfolded before him. Like a fine jutsu, a thought he’d worried to death and left to stew, strings and ideas and plots just unfurled before him, a banner of connections and words and ideas strung together by the thinnest of threads, the barest of coincidences but by kami if he pulled it off – he’d win it all.

Against this opponent, anyway.

“I’m going to break him,” Katashi repeated quietly, firmly, “Because what he is doing is _wrong_ , Takeshi. Suna is a bad place for genius, you told me once. And you were right. You _are_ right. But it shouldn’t be that way.”

It _wasn’t_ that way, in the time-yet-to-come. The number of brilliant young shinobi and kunoichi Suna could produce when they weren’t being culled was staggering – the number of older ninja who stepped forward and said they had a slightly better way to do this, they’d thought of a neat trick a while back but didn’t dare share – it had taken a few years without the Fourth Kazekage at the helm, but Suna had truly blossomed then, had shown her treasures for the world to marvel at.

Only for Akatsuki to burn them away.

“I should never have brought you back here,” Takeshi choked, a broken kind of pride on his face, eyes shining with unshed tears, “ _Fuck_ I should have just run to Konoha, to Iron – _anywhere_ kami help us. Katashi – this place is going to kill you.”

He hadn’t known that, Katashi realized, staring at his friend in shock. He _hadn’t known that_ , hadn’t known that his friend-brother-everything had rescued him from that mission-gone-to-hell and considered never returning, had thought about, seriously thought about, leaving Suna behind. Taking the pair of them anywhere at all so long as they didn’t return here.

“There is no place else I would rather die,” he said honestly, “No one else I would rather die _for_. Takeshi – you and Suna are everything I have. If you died – if you actually _died_ I – it wouldn’t be pretty. Kaoru-chan you’re – you would help. You are family, are team, but – Takeshi.”

“Senpai is your sun,” she shrugged, looking remarkably calm for someone who’d heard what amounted to high treason, amongst other things, bantered back and forth in this argument, “Suna your moon. I know, taicho.”

Takeshi laughed, a broken, weary sound that Katashi hated even as he loved that Takeshi was still alive to make it, “They warned me,” he said quietly. “They warned me that we were too codependent.”

“Please,” Katashi snorted, stepping forward and pulling his center-brother-all into a hug, Kaoru going bug-eyed at the fact he’d initiated the gesture, “That sounds like shrink-speak for jealousy.”

Takeshi choked on a laugh, burying his face into Katashi’s shoulder, inhaling deeply before he said quietly, “You have a plan.”

“I do,” Katashi confirmed softly.

“Are you alive at the end?”

“Yes.”

“Are you _happy_ at the end?”

“Hopefully.”

“If it’s not yes to both, ditch the plan,” Takeshi said, “That’s all I ask.”

“A tall order,” Katashi said quietly, knowing it was impossible to promise his friend this. Too much was at stake, in the long run. While he didn’t have a _plan_ for that, none of them did, but to promise he would ditch whatever plan they did come up with for the sake of his life and happiness? No. Not worth it, not worth it in the least.

But if it would help his Takeshi sleep through the night, rest easier while he was on a mission knowing he had these words to fall back on, then he would say it.

His nindo, after all, was Takeshi, first and always.

“I give you my word,” Katashi finally said, “My word, that I will do so.”

Kaoru finally couldn’t take it anymore and lunged at them with a sniffle, both of them pulling her into their hug and just standing there for a while longer. Sentimental and weak it may be to those strict followers of the shinobi code, but Katashi was certain that if anyone asked these two, they’d agree with him.

Right now, he’d never felt stronger.

***===***pagebreak***===***

“So, here’s the thing,” Kaoru said the following morning, looking over at him from where she stood by the stove, “You’re a lying liar who lies.”

“I am a shinobi, yes,” Katashi agreed dryly, paging through a fascinating treatise the Sandaime had sent him via Naruto last month – he’d never even _thought_ about some of these coefficients!

“Haha,” she replied flatly, before shrugging, “No stones being thrown, boss. But no way would you let your death or happiness interfere in a plan, not if that plan keeps senpai safe. So I want you to turn that genius brain of yours to something _besides_ badass jutsus you already know how to do.”

Katashi raised an eyebrow, looking up at her finally and saying, “No promises.”

She snorted, “Please. I want you to figure out a way for me to know if you’re dead, no matter how far or how deep undercover you are – if you’re dead, I want to know. And I want to know right away. Conversely, I want that same method to let me know if you’re alive – because if you get sent out and reported dead, I need to know if I’m planning a rescue mission or a vengeance blitz. They require a different touch.”

Something in her gaze softened and she continued quietly, “And if you can manage it, giving something like that to Takeshi-senpai would take a great weight off his shoulders, I think.”

“Unless I manage to do something stupid enough that I die,” Katashi pointed out dryly, “No, Kaoru. I think I will leave anything along those lines to you. I’ll get to work on it.”

Once he finished this treatise – something hidden in its analysis of Sky-Village jutsus might somehow be useful after all.


	8. Total Departure

_…reports greatly underestimated both size and the skill-level of nuke-nin led bandits._ Katashi’s knuckles went white around his pen as he stared at the deceptively calm sentence, the hiss of a ventilator echoing in his ears with the level beeping of the heart-rate monitor setting his own heart’s pace.

Taking a sip of by now no-longer even lukewarm tea, he set it aside and continued to write, careful to keep his kanji even and precise. The least tremor would give away emotional distress and he refused to give that _bastard_ he’d once sworn loyalty to (loyalty was a two way street you _fucking jackass_ just _wait_ I will _end you_ ) the satisfaction of knowing he’d been disturbed.

This last mission had crossed a line. Threaten him, place him in danger with poor-intelligence missions, with impossibly contradictory orders, with betrayal direct to those he was hired to eliminate – he would find a way, he would survive, and while he might curse and moan and grumble he would take it as his due, as what he had earned by being incautious.

But touch his team? His people?

He had given everything to keep them safe, once upon a time, and it hadn’t been enough. He would not fail now, and any who stood in his way would die. Kazekage or not.

_Initial reports (see appendix A2 for supplied intelligence) indicated presence of two jounin-level shinobi, up to five chunnin level shinobi and at least fifteen bandits trained in basic chakra manipulation. Sensory-nin were assumed to be present and middling-competence._

_Investigation into recent raids conducted at the sites indicated inaccurate assessment of jutsu traces and weapons-scarring…_

Gathering your own intelligence on missions was only common sense, but he doubted most took it to the extent he had found he had to. They had examined two recent raids, one reported one found by careful questioning of locals while under henge, and come to the conclusion that there were in fact _four_ jounin level nin at the _least_ with at least that many chunnin and more likely more, while the bandits numbered thirty and were trained in all the basic chakra exercises and up to D-rank jutsus.

Eyewitnesses, of which there were very, very few surviving, reported kawarimi, standard bunshin and probable henge use, as well as what could be interpreted as basic genjutsus.

There was no way this band had gone unnoticed for this long without interference at higher levels, not with the frequency of their attacks. Someone had decided to leave them be, to only interfere when they attacked caravans that paid for individual protection, and that someone, he wouldn’t doubt, had just been waiting to use them as a disposal method for inconveniences.

_After analysis, it was determined mission parameters could still be met. Tracking resulted in multiple hide-outs, all of which were under concealment jutsus and extensively trapped. Chakra-sensing was utilized to determine which of these hide-outs were occupied and to hunt down the jounin-level opponents. In order to accomplish mission outcomes 3A and 3B, we retreated after determining location of the majority of the bandits’ forces (see appendix B1 for map) and circled around to approach from the northwest, disguising ourselves as shinobi from Iwa, jounin-level (see appendix A1 for original orders)._

Setting that paper aside for the moment, he pulled out a clean sheet and his worn copy of the mission orders and initial intelligence. Technically speaking, these were supposed to be attached to the mission report, but every member of the team was issued their own copy, so he simply reported his lost and took a teammates. He wanted to keep track of just what sort of trickery had been applied towards him after all, and it wasn’t illegal, just frowned upon.

Pulling a pencil out from behind his ear, he started drafting a neater copy of the scrawled map he’d placed on the mission intelligence briefing – utterly useless in everything except the reports of the most recent attacks, and even those had been out of date. Hopefully there were actual updated and accurate assessments somewhere and he was simply being issued altered and bullshitted copies, because otherwise his comrades were falling very short of the intelligence standard he was accustomed to.

Finishing the sketch, he took his pen and traced over the lines in ink so they would be better preserved before neatly labeling the corner with the appropriate index. As _taicho_ , he was responsible for the most thorough report, containing original mission orders, all supporting documentation necessary, assessments of shinobi under his command even if all he ended up saying was ‘competent’ along with recommendations.

That section was actually the most entertaining to fill out when it came to these reports on sabotaged missions. It was a good thing he knew that these missions were only so badly messed up for him, or he would have lost all respect for their intelligence gathering teams.

There was a potential angle to explore – especially with Takeshi growing a network in the IA department, reviled and feared though they were. How many were aware, truly knowledgeable, of this active sabotage of shinobi with talent? They would be the most likely source for whistle-blowers exposing talented shinobi and kunoichi for what they were.

_However, judging by the focus on Earth element ninjutsus rather than the wind and water combinations considered most effective against standard trained Iwa-nin and the lead jounin’s shouts regarding ‘Suna scum’ it is likely that this deception was unsuccessful. Due to the fact such remarks were heard moments after the attack was initiated, it is likely that the mission was compromised prior to our assault. Judging by the extensive trap-fields and high levels of preparedness, it is likely they were aware of a planned extermination mission from Suna. Recommendations: step up investigation for moles and infiltrators, increase of compromised missions is concerning trend._

A nurse came in, nodding to him politely before proceeding with her duties to the patient. Bandages and dressings were changed, notes made on the charts, and a murmured, “More tea, shinobi-san?”

“No thank you,” he replied politely, raising an eyebrow at the woman and she nodded again, looking at her chart briefly before saying, “At this point it is up to her to wake up. There are no physical sources for her unconsciousness, I will be recommending the doctor declare her comatose. Standard shinobi-care practices indicate she will be kept on life-support for two weeks unless you, as her next of kin, make other arrangements. I will make a note for the doctor to speak with you as to the options available and their relative expense at earliest convenience.”

Katashi nodded again, and the woman left. Opening the folder he’d stuffed his papers in, he reread his last paragraph before continuing to write:

_Deploying 2 shadow clones to distract chunnin level opponents (3), Quail and I engaged lead jounin (2) in combat. Wide-area jutsu took out majority of bandits present at encampment 2 (see appendix B1), estimated to be near genin-level (~12). One chunnin opponent (Nukenin – River, see appendix C1.1) was hit by friendly fire and eliminated, cause of death, arterial blood-loss. Minor injuries taken by myself and Quail._

_Reinforcements alerted by previously unnoticed seal-matrix communication (turned into fuuinjutsu analysis squad, ref. #43-A7-22) arrived; unprofessional, distracted secondary leader (Nukenin – Bear, see appendix C1.2) executed by Quail, cause of death, snapped spine. Arrival of 2 new jounin level opponents resulted in splitting of focus. Initial opponent (Nukenin – Iwa, appendix C1.4) retreated to let reinforcements distract us. Wide-area katon supplemented by kaze took care of dross (~5 bandits, 1 chunnin, appendix C1.3). Quail eliminated 2 initial chunnin opponents, shadow-clones dispelled at this point. Quail ingested one soldier pill._

_3 jounin level opponents including leader, 4 chunnin level opponents and 13 genin-level bandits remained in field of engagement._

_Quail utilized kenjutsu and mirror-based genjutsu to disorient and kill ~8 bandits and engaged 2 chunnin in active combat. I engaged lead jounin (C1.4). Applied charge to kunai, transfer of charge through blades stopped his heart. His body was used as a shield against remaining two jounin, water and earth specialists._

_Remaining 2 chuunin opponents jumped into our fight at this point. Quail was targeted by water specialist while chunnin and the earth specialist exhibited creative team strategies (deviation of standard Iwa patterns Shiroi-4, followed by Fang hunter pattern 6). During course of latter’s dust-storm conclusion, a surge of chakra from another uncovered sealing array (recovered partially, turned over to fuuinjutsu team, ref. #43-C7-22) disoriented me, as sensory techniques were utilized to engage three opponents successfully. Brief disorientation resulted in dislocated shoulder due to poor dodge of taijutsu blow, struck the attacker (chunnin, appendix C1.5) in the armpit, bled out quickly._

_Other chunnin emotionally compromised, unable to fight effectively and maneuvered into jounin’s earth jutsu, killed by crushing, see appendix C1.6. Jounin broke off engagement and ran, took opportunity to examine field of engagement. Found Quail down with leg mangled and extremely low on chakra, force fed her a soldier pill and provided a tourniquet. Generated one shadow clone to take her to Suna at best speed. Proceeded in pursuit. For report from shadow clone’s perspective, see appendix D1._

Katashi had to put his pen aside at that point and run his hands through his hair, exhaling slowly through his nose. Reports didn’t need full jutsu names, not unless details were requested – with these sorts of missions they never were. It didn’t matter, so long as the mission was done. It meant his raiton-charge-transfer kill wouldn’t be questioned, not in detail; it was a method considered theoretically feasible. What he hadn’t mentioned was the fact he’d been furious enough (Kaoru was bleeding, was faltering behind him and _this was bullshit_ ) that he had curled the chidori around his fist and blade and slammed it through the man’s chest. Hence the slight misdirection regarding using the body of his dead enemy as a shield – he’d only brought the head back, but it was best to be thorough.

He’d sensed the flare of chakra from the seal, because _of course_ one of those fuckers was a fuuinjutsu combat specialist, and that would _never_ have made it into the sabotaged reports because fuuinjutsu was dangerous no matter _what_ level shinobi the user was. You didn’t need to be a chakra powerhouse, a taijutsu monster, to kill entire armies with a few carefully chosen seals and some timing. There was a _reason_ half the shinobi world had united to destroy Uzushiogakure.

He’d also sensed Kaoru’s chakra waver and scream and falter and start to fade and he had thrown caution to the wind, screaming winds around him and cutting the chunnin to ribbons. The jounin had been able to dodge and had run for it at that point, and Katashi had let him go, coldly confident he’d find the man again – he’d sent a zephyr in pursuit, and he’d worked with Hatake, one of the best trackers in the business. He’d find a terrified out of his mind jounin verging on chakra exhaustion in no time at all.

Kaoru’s opponents had scattered, the few that had lagged behind (bandits with bare training, had to be as slow as they were) dead with slashes of his tessen and snarls through his mask before he dropped to his knees by Kaoru and felt his heart _break_ when she stared up at him with those kami-awful brown-black eyes full of wondering awe and blood bubbled from her lips as she whispered through a grin, “So badass!”

The seal had been a mess, a flare of blinding chakra and surge of electricity for all in the area – Kaoru had known enough to get away from the ground but she’d still been hit badly, disoriented enough for her leg to get caught in the aftermath of a bastardized healing jutsu turning her bones into balls of spikes. It was a jutsu he recognized from the twisted genius of Kabuto and that didn’t make _sense_ how could it be out already how was this possible what was going wrong this hadn’t shown up for years decades kami no not Kaoru not his kohai –

At that point he could remember things clearly, flatly, as if he were a step removed and unaffected. It was a state he’d learned to induce, had used for the majority of his life after Takeshi’s death if he were honest, had used to hold himself together and function as he tried to claw his way back to some form of humanity. It was probably a bad thing that slipping into that state again felt a bit like coming home.

But that state had gotten his mind together, gotten his shadow clone home with Kaoru limp in his arms and breathing oh so damnably slow and low and slight and he’d thought she’d _died_ when Bakemono had told him he’d failed the mission for nothing for what kami he’d thought she’d _died_ she was _gone_ the medics hadn’t been able to save her he was a _failure_ –

He would never forgive Bakemono for what he’d said.

Kaoru was not nothing. She was not “some stupid nothing stunt you just threw away any chance of safety for, what the hell were you _thinking_ ” she was his _kohai_ and that bastard had no right to decide that her life was more important than the bullshit idea that he might be able to earn his way back into the Kazekage’s good graces and get off the inconveniences to be eliminated list.

It would never happen. Because the man was right, Katashi _was_ a threat. Hadn’t been before, even with being back in time, with knowing how much he’d screwed up, he wasn’t a threat. Hadn’t been a threat.

Until Takeshi had looked at him, scared, horrified, worried and near tears, because of the threats that man had made. Until Kaoru had grown cold in his-yet-not’s arms as he raced across the dunes the dirt the cliffs frantically feeding her chakra but not draining himself-yet-not to the point of dispelling, to the point of condemning her to ignominious death in the middle of tractless Suna where no one would ever find her again.

 _Now_ he was a threat.

 _Now_ , he wasn’t going to rest until he saw the man dead himself. And preferably, dead knowing he was a failure, that he was trapped, doomed, had sealed his own fate. Because there was no satisfaction in killing a man that had no idea what he’d done to wrong you. Who had no suspicion that there was a motive besides money or politics in their blood and cash soaked world.

He wanted the Kazekage to see his death coming, to see his end, as a politician, as a powerful man, as a _breathing being_ , and be unable to escape it. Just as so many other brilliant bright Suna shinobi and kunoichi had been unable to escape their own fates, unable to fight against the weight of a Kage thrown against them, unable to even see the threat from the man they’d sworn to follow until it was too late.

For all of them, for Takeshi, for Kaoru, he would kill him.

And he would ruin him first.

***===***pagebreak***===***

Red-hot metal was hammered into shape, white chakra flickering across its expanse as two broken halves were re-forged. Goggles firmly in place – his lightning affinity had a tendency to spark, after all – Hatake Kakashi kept only half a mind on his work.

The hard part of rebuilding his father’s tanto had been done in time-not-yet, after all, where all the technicalities and details had been worked out along with various enhancements he’d considered. In the end, he had decided on a simple restoration – it was complex enough to keep him interested, useful as a warm-up exercise and meant he could think more heavily on the longer-term projects he had underway.

Such as their armor and disguises for the Mizu mission, and more likely, for their entire operation against Akatsuki. If, against all odds, they were able to kill the masked Uchiha (Tobi, who, exactly, did his demented former comrade think he was fooling?) then Madara would be left locked away in Susanoo, so long as Itachi never freed him. Given Sarutobi-sama’s confirmation that the massacre had, indeed, been ordered and that Itachi was, in fact, reporting on Akatsuki, that seemed unlikely.

Not impossible and something to remain wary of, but unlikely.

However, they would still have the remainder of Akatsuki to deal with, and while Naruto insisted on the fact he’d be able to talk Pein around, Kakashi would much rather plan for having to deal with the six paths of Pein along with Akatsuki and, for good measure, an army of Edo Tensei undead legends. It would make anything more manageable a pleasant surprise.

So, they would need to act in Mizu, and undoubtedly elsewhere, in a manner that did not indicate loyalty to any one village. Some sort of uniform would be necessary as well, and unfortunately simply swapping their hita-ate for the one with a shinobi kanji was not going to do it this time around.

Though he’d have to include that somewhere – to honor their not-yet-never-maybe comrades against those madmen.

Armor of course, entirely custom. He had a rough design for Katashi in mind; thankfully he’d gotten his measurements during their last meeting and tinkered with his grandmother’s tessen to optimize chakra flow for him – that should give him enough data to work with to come up with a modifiable prototype. If they could get some down time after Kiri and he could talk Katashi into lurking in the Hatake compound for a few weeks he’d be able to make a true masterpiece, but he doubted that would happen before the chunin exams.

If those even happened as they not-yet-had, but seeing as their main focus right now was Akatsuki and not Orochimaru or even Suna-Konoha politics, he doubted their actions would do anything to really subvert that particular event. The grudges involved were too long standing.

Tanto plunged into water to cool, he eyed the steam thoughtfully - it reminded him of the jinchuuriki Han. Now his armor had been interesting – bizarrely delicate at times, but interesting.

“Yo Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto bellowed, sounds indicating he was crashing through the Hatake compound as per usual and Kakashi sighed, removing the blade to continue its shaping. Naruto had taken to the new shadow clone with enthusiasm, leaving a sturdy bunshin in the Academy while he worked in the Forest of Death to get his younger body up to reasonable snuff. The hope was that he’d be able to go on missions with Kakashi soon so by the time eight months rolled around he’d be all set to go out on his own.

Mizu was only one angle of attack after all, and if they were going to get a true anti-Akatsuki movement going, they’d need more appearances than just the two ANBU could manage.

ANBU – maybe a mask of some sort? Blank porcelain, with seals to block the byakugan and the kanji for shinobi on their foreheads. Yes, that would work nicely.

Supplement with cloth masks woven with chakra to circumvent the byakugan further (yet another reason for the traditional Hatake masks, as it happened) and they would be set against Ao and any Hyuugas they ran up against.

“Kakashi-sensei, Kakashi-sensei! I just had the most brilliant idea ever!” Naruto beamed, bursting through the doorway to the forge and hopping up to sit on the workbench in the back.

“Hmm, you say something?”

Naruto scoffed, “So cruel! I should make you sweat for it – nah, too cool to not share! I think I figured out a way to forcibly deactivate the Sharingan!”

It was a good thing he was basically done with the tanto, Kakashi acknowledged, because that last slip might have ruined it.

“Ha! Knew that’d catch your interest!” Naruto beamed, the ludicrously tiny powerhouse continuing, “It’s a seal – and I _think_ , if we could manage to test it I’ll be sure, but I _think_ that it’ll let you deactivate your Sharingan, giving you two working eyes without a beastly chakra drain. And talk about an epic disguise!”

“Not utilizable in combat then?” Kakashi asked.

Naruto grumbled, “No, it’s too slow to activate,” before perking up, “But I might be able to modify it! I’ll want to see if this one even works though – which raises the question – where, _oh where_ are we going to find implanted Sharingan to experiment on?”

“You planned this entire thing to get an excuse to go after Danzo, didn’t you.”

“I cannot confirm, nor deny, any such allegations. You in?”

“Need you ask?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a heck of a lot later than I anticipated, the next chapter! I have the next one basically written, just need to redo some stuff and do some touch-ups, so hopefully it won't be another two months for it.
> 
> Hope it was worth the wait. If it's a little confusing, no worries - clarification to come.


	9. Rise of a Storm

Gaara sat on his comrade’s futon, watching as the man in question drove himself into the ground struggling with an impossibility. He was loathe to call anything an impossibility though – far too many of the things the four of them had managed had been called impossible, both together and separately. Their accidental time travel was simply the most absurd.

He… regretted, what had happened. What their plan had brought down on these relative innocents. Katashi held his team close to his heart, guarded them with a jealous sort of wonder, and he could not blame him. If his future siblings suddenly came back to him… well.

If he had been forced into this situation with one of his future-one-day-siblings, Suna would be a very different place already. Katashi had commendable self-control.

But if he could see that attachment, then so too could others. Hells, the phrase _‘worryingly codependent’_ actually showed up in his and his teammate’s psych reviews! It wouldn’t take a genius of any sort to realize that if you needed to ruin Katashi, removing one of those supposed crutches from the equation would be the easiest way to do it, and even better, make it look like an accident. Or at least, unrelated to some genius-hunting scheme.

Of course, said not-really-hypothetical not-genius had failed to take into account the fact that Katashi was stronger than that, was far more stubborn than that, and would be far more likely to take any damage to his teammates, to his comrades, as deathly insult, as a challenge, than he would be to collapse under his own brilliance.

He had lived through his team’s sundering before, after all, and had been the farthest thing from broken.

It was amusing, in a sadly typical sort of way, that Gaara couldn’t remember the moment when this man had become his right hand. He had remembered competent ANBU members, competent shinobi that could follow his orders despite their personal experience and probable hatred of him for his past actions, and that was where Crow first appeared in his recollection. Even then, before he had gotten to know the man, before he had truly understood his shinobi, he had been able to see the way that supposed superiors, technical leaders, would tilt their heads and listen when this shinobi spoke.

But even with that, he had been one among many. An understated sort of brilliance, quiet competence not demanding anything aside from being paid on time.

But when Akatsuki had come, pulling him from his village, leaving him momentarily dead, things had shifted. His people had really come to believe his change of heart. And with that, had come an easier relationship with his shinobi, his ANBU.

And with the unacknowledged elder-leader- _taicho_ , Crow.

Then over the course of the descending spiral, the wretched slip and slide and wrench as Madara, as Akatsuki, became so very much more of a threat than they could have ever anticipated – he had come to expect that sun-scorched wind chakra to be on his left, had found himself unconsciously twisting around zephyrs and razor-edged tempests while his sand braced and blocked for more than just himself as a matter of course.

As usual, it had been Naruto that finally made the comparison between Crow and the ever faithful Inu-sensei that dogged his heels.

Which had only grown more hilarious when names were finally exchanged between all of them for a brief undercover mission doubling as injury recovery.

Tashi-nii-san and Kashi-nii-san had not been amused.

Sighing, Gaara checked the clock again before standing and walking over to Katashi, sand gathering under his feet so he could look over the man’s shoulder at the scrawls all across his desk and scraps of scrolls. He had done what he could, raiding libraries and private collections alike while Katashi devoured knowledge he thought he’d need, but had none of Katashi’s elegant genius when it came to hand-seals and jutsu-crafting.

He was no genius, not really. He was simply… gifted.

“You need to sleep, Katashi,” he murmured, Katashi twitching slightly but otherwise not reacting.

“I will drug you,” he threatened, entirely serious. They’d done it to each other more times than it bore thinking about. It would take him a while, seeing as he had none of the necessary drugs on him at the moment, but he was confident that if he had some time in the kitchen he could whip something up. Kankuro as a brother had given him plenty of exposure to deadly and not-so-much concoctions after all.

“I have eight more days,” Katashi rasped, “I can’t – I can afford another week of life-support for her, more if she comes off the ventilator but – she needs to wake up. She needs to _wake up_ kami I’m losing them again, what have I _done_ – “

“You have done nothing more than everything you could!” Gaara snapped, forcing Katashi to meet his gaze, “You could not have anticipated this, the changes are _too great_ on _both_ sides for you to have had any chance to predict this sort of outcome. And now you are running yourself into the ground to try and come up with something to bring her out of it!”

Releasing his chin, he wrapped thin arms around the man’s neck and felt him shudder, Gaara murmuring, “You need to _rest_ , Katashi. You will do no one any good at all if you pass out from exhaustion, if you grow delirious from lack of sleep. I will make it an order if I have to.”

“All right, all right,” Katashi finally gave in, pulling back from the second successful embrace Gaara had initiated in this lifetime and dragging his hand over his face tiredly, “I’ll go shower and sleep. Could you… could you watch Kaoru, for me?”

“Of course,” Gaara frowned, “But I will also keep an eye on you, I want at _least_ five hours before you start again, understood?”

Katashi chuckled wearily, “You know me too well, Kazekage-sama. Agreed. Five hours.”

Gaara nodded and swept out the window. He had a watch to stand, and if he could dreg up any memories of healing, squirrel away any tidbit that would help Katashi save this purple-haired girl he was so fond of, then all the better. She was one of his shinobi now, even if she may never come to know it.

***===***pagebreak***===***

As well-meaning as Gaara’s suggestion had been, as _wise_ as it had been, Katashi could not sleep. He simply stared up at the ceiling, heart aching as he sensed the quiet hum-and-rush of Takeshi’s chakra a wall away and the utter absence of Kaoru’s bubbling feathers-and-laughter anywhere in the apartment.

She had been out for over a week now, listed as truly comatose for eight days and the countdown was bearing down on him. He’d managed to dodge any longer out-of-village missions so he could stay, could have a chance if inspiration struck, but it wasn’t striking. No matter how much he researched, how desperately he twisted and warped and turned and inspected the data, nothing was coming to him.

A jutsu couldn’t solve this problem. This problem needed a healer.

Closing his eyes, he exhaled slowly and let his mind sink back, as he’d done too often over these past days, sifting through any and all memories he had of green eyes flashing under pink hair as the medical powerhouse taught anyone who expressed interest. Sakura-san had been a true genius at medicine, and if time had been kind, she would have far surpassed Tsunade-sama as a healer, as a medic.

But time had not been kind, and she’d died far too young with blood on her fists and green chakra pulsing into the wounded around her with every faltering heartbeat.

And even now, with time reversed, she would be no help. She was a bare child, barely even in the academy and probably enduring teasing about her forehead, of all things. Children were strange creatures to begin with; children of peacetime? Even more so.

Besides, she was of Konoha. It wasn’t like he’d be able to just waltz in to the village, grab a skilled medic and run right out again. Even if he _did_ manage to beg the Sandaime into it, Sunagakure would never accept their aid. It would be a full on infiltration mission and far too risky to the medic in question for the Sandaime to offer it, so Tsunade-sama’s legacy of solid medical training was out of reach –

Legacy. Tsuande-sama had left a legacy in her green-eyed student, a truly great one. But she’d had other legacies, other students who were alive now, who were alive and feasible _options_ , unlike the great Sannin herself.

Shizune, whose combat skills relied extensively on poisons.

Who would be able to tell him if there was something being mixed in with Kaoru’s medications that was anything but.

Forget sleep.

He had a plan to craft.

***===***pagebreak***===***

The next day found him forced quite willingly into taking an out-of-village mission. He hadn’t quite counted on this, but the fact that it had happened made things much easier for him. He accepted the orders with carefully crafted resignation, a weariness he really did feel exaggerated for an audience he needed to fool for one more week.

If he could fool them for longer, all the better. But one week was all he would need.

A flicker of poison-gold chakra caught his attention as he sped north across the desert. The mission was a supposedly simple courier run – picking up documents from a spy in Bear – and he wouldn’t be surprised if this mission had no strange difficulties at all. As it was, even traveling his top speed, enhanced by his wind and uncaring of detection, he would take six days to get there and back.

Just as well he wasn’t actually going there then.

That flare of chakra had been the signal that he was now out of range of the standard patrols, patrols Gaara had come to know quite well with his frequent forays into the desert. It had also meant Gaara was staging a convenient distraction, so no one would be around for his rather obvious next step.

Between one step and the next, one silhouette against the dunes became four, reinforced kage bunshins falling in step with him. The one that remained looking like him took a scroll detailing the mission and another one holding sealed supplies – while they had been cloned with all of his gear, any of that gear undergoing excessive force would dispel the clone itself, which made fighting as a clone rather difficult, even with reinforcement.

The other two had henged into other ANBU, shifting their body-types and masks around so no one would grow too suspicious of the group – well, no more suspicious than they would be with three Suna ANBU anyway. As they were all him, they were well aware of the plan and no words were exchanged as they parted, the clones heading north and west, for Grass, while Katashi headed straight north, to Fire.

He needed his comrades’ resources after all. Kaoru didn’t have time to waste.

Thankfully they’d managed to get the Sandaime to okay a breach in security procedures so he’d be able to get to the Hatake clan compound without being detected except by Naruto’s sealing arrays. By the time the man had granted permission, they’d already set up the entire thing anyway and undoubtedly the Hokage had guessed that, but official sanction could always come in handy. The more things they had permission for, the fewer things they had to waste such a valuable commodity as forgiveness on.

The day after he left Suna – he might have foregone sleep for progress – he emerged in Hatake’s entry-room. A welcoming title for what amounted to a maximum security cell; there would be an alert sent out that someone had entered, and Katashi was able to send out another pulse by activating a hidden array that would tell them to hurry it up, but he’d be waiting here until Naruto or Hatake came by to let him out.

Despite his anxiety, falling into a light doze while he waited was fairly simple – he was _doing_ something again, was on a mission, so allowing his mind to sabotage his efforts by exhausting him was unacceptable. That being said, he still jumped straight into full alertness when the arrays along the east wall started pulsing before the earth peeled back and revealed Naruto standing in front of a metal ladder, wearing what looked like a miniaturized ANBU uniform.

Katashi blinked for a few moments before shaking his head and saying, “I need to know where Tsunade-sama and Shizune-san are. Permission to negotiate with Shizune-san for her expertise would be nice, but not necessary.”

“Who’s injured?” Naruto asked, leading him up the ladder and into the basement complex proper. The warren of rooms under the classically styled compound were impressive, to say the least; not the least of which being the fact that no one outside of the three of them and possibly the Sandaime had any idea as to the extent of the place – the Hatake clan had once been notorious for near samurai-like notions of honor and neutrality after all.

Katashi had always wondered what foreseeing ancestor had decided to publically adopt those tenets.

“Kaoru-chan, it was one of the usual misranked missions but this was rather spectacular – and undoubtedly intentional. I wouldn’t doubt that particular crew was saved just for this sort of elimination,” Katashi grimaced, mask bouncing against his hip as Naruto led the way towards a section he didn’t remember. “She’s comatose, leg shattered with that bone-shredder Kabuto was fond of, along with chakra drain and the usual. No physical reason for her not to be waking up, according to the hospital.”

“But you think there may be something going on to keep her under,” Naruto guessed, eyes narrowing, “That asshole would break medic neutrality?”

“Oh I doubt whoever’s doing it – if it’s happening – is actually a sworn medic,” Katashi scowled, “Interns and trainees don’t take those oaths, after all.”

“Which is damn stupid since they’re usually the most vulnerable to intimidation or ambition,” Naruto growled, finally opening the last door and revealing Hatake in front of a bank of medical monitors, a one-way window next to him and revealing once Shimura Danzo, secured to a hospital bed, unconscious, and covered in seals.

Raising an eyebrow, Katashi let the seals distract him for a moment while Naruto explained the situation to Kakashi, who let out a growl before turning and wrapping an arm around his shoulders, tugging him in for a half-embrace, “We’ll kill that fucker,” he promised lowly, “We’ll _end him_ for this.”

“Not yet,” Katashi murmured, relaxing at the offer of vengeance and imminent violence, “I want him to be ruined first. Shizune-san?”

“I can get the information – the Sandaime will never okay it,” Hatake said, rubbing at his face tiredly, “We – ah, we probably used up our quota for future-based requests when we requested Danzo for sharingan-sealing experimentation.”

“So that’s what they’re for? That’d be damn useful,” Katashi mused, eyeing the unconscious elder thoughtfully before shaking his head and focusing again on his more urgent problem. “Understandable, but that does make things complicated.”

“We _do_ have a document he gave us saying that our actions are part of a long-term double-S mission and we’re to receive all possible aid, but if it gets out that we used that to borrow Shizune – and if she gets caught, even worse – we will definitely be fucked as far as future collaboration goes,” Naruto’s eyes narrowed in thought even as he explained, “But… using it to get her to hear you out shouldn’t be too out of line…”

“What sort of payment were you going to offer?” Kakashi asked bluntly, finally removing his arm from around his shoulders and regaining his habitual slouch, “I can offer money, if nothing else, but that won’t be enough.”

“I should have enough _ryo_ myself, but thanks,” Katashi hesitated before explaining what he hoped would be the deal-sealer, “As for the rest, I’m going to offer everything I can remember of Haruno-san’s thought exercises on how to heal Gekko Hayate.”

The Hatake let out a low whistle and Naruto cackled, “She’ll _definitely_ go for that – I can’t believe I forgot that you two used to sit around and chat hypotheticals as a break from desperation healing. How far did you get with it?”

“Developed quite a few theories that hadn’t been tested yet, and even treatment plans for the ones she thought the most compelling,” Katashi felt his own shoulders start to bow, “I just hope it’s enough.”

“So long as you present the offer right, it should do it,” Naruto reassured him, “With the letter to get her to hear you out, so long as you don’t make it sound like you’ll _never_ hand over the knowledge if she doesn’t help, she won’t be bitter about it – maybe say you can hand it over to her in exchange or she can pay through the nose for it because it wasn’t your cure in the first place? She’ll be annoyed, holding someone’s health hostage, but as you’re asking her to heal someone else she’ll probably at least be sympathetic enough to cancel that out.”

Seeing as he’d never really associated with the woman before her head injury left her unable to concentrate for more than short periods of time, markedly changing her personality, he would take Naruto’s word for it and hope this worked out. If it didn’t, he was out of ideas.

If Kaoru died like this, he might just say screw the plan and deal with the kazekage immediately.

“Let’s get you the documentation. Naruto can deal with that while I go hassle some records keepers for her latest whereabouts,” Hatake said, leading the way out of the observation room even as he left a clone behind.

An hour later saw him racing out of Konoha again, blank authorization from the Hokage burning a hole in his chest pocket and echoes of his partners’ well-wishes and god-speeds in his ears.

By this time tomorrow, he needed an answer.

***===***pagebreak***===***

Shizune sipped at her tea, careful to keep her expression bland as she thought over the offer the man across from her had made. She had left Konoha as a teenager, had not exchanged more than scarce letters with her former genin teammates in all that time, but they still held a place in her heart.

She’d exhausted quite a few avenues of research looking into Hayate-kun’s illness, what some called the Gekko family _kekkai-genkai_ with sneers of disdain, and had long ago resigned herself to losing him to a wasting disease she didn’t understand. Were she in Konoha, perhaps there was something she could do, if she could convince Tsunade-sama, perhaps there would be a chance for an extension at least – but the chances were never enough to be worth leaving Tsuande, which was what she would have to do.

But Tsunade had entered a poker tournament that would last two weeks, and it had only started yesterday. While her master drank excessively, she remained in control of herself for the first half of these tournaments so it was only after that she really needed to be around.

Suna though – that was a risk.

Examining the first of the theories he’d presented her with, proof that he had useful theories to pass on to her, she ran her fingers along the neatly written kanji. It was a solid theory, the proposed treatments good; there were elements missing, she already knew, but it was an avenue she hadn’t explored yet. If any one of the three other theories he claimed to have were half as useful and novel as this one, this payment would far surpass whatever value in _ryo_ may have been assigned to a mission of this rank.

He knew of her, and more critically, knew of her emotional investment in her teammate. It was only the authorization letter of the Hokage – interwoven with chakra, keyed to this man’s and a few others’ she didn’t recognize, confirming it was truly meant for him to use – that kept her from trying something undoubtedly foolish. She was sure this man had made a career out of being underestimated until he was ready to strike, or until he was backed into a corner.

He was approaching her, when to do so was evidence of treason, but had no worry for his own safety or security, only for his injured and comatose teammate.

He wasn’t in a corner yet, and she really, really didn’t want to see him in one.

“All right, Arashi-san,” she said, looking up from the paper with a grim expression, “You have yourself a deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have the next 2 or so chapters basically hashed out, but there are some sticky parts (of course) and I'm going to an internet-free zone for a summer job, but by August you can definitely expect the next one, and hopefully earlier if I get a break long enough to hit up a wifi spot. Hope the chapter was even sort of worth the wait!


	10. Twists and Turns and Summons

Hidden away in a sand-dune covered shelter Gaara had built just for this, Katashi watched quietly as Shizune scowled and snarled her way through the results of her analysis. Getting her into Suna had been depressingly easy, and getting her into Kaoru’s hospital room suspiciously so – only the fact that he had significantly changed his chakra-signature by carefully painted on seals kept him from worrying over a trap designed to paint him as derelict in duty.

The fact that Gaara had been able to keep an eye on things from afar also helped.

“Well,” she finally growled, “This is a nasty piece of neglect.”

He mutely passed her a cup of tea and a ration bar in exchange for the papers she’d scrawled her notations on during their visit as nondescript intern-and-nurse earlier this morning. He read while she chewed, and while he wasn’t a half-bad combat medic, the majority of what he was reading hardly made sense to him. She apparently realized that and began to explain after swallowing the last of her bar, “She’s not being actively sabotaged in her recovery, but there are at least three possible treatments – a little exotic, but not particularly expensive – that should have been tried by now. She’s a valuable shinobi even down a leg – and treating that shouldn’t have required amputation either, but I don’t know what standards your medics hold to so I can’t really comment on that.”

“But it’s possible this is standard practice for comatose shinobi not holding vital mission information?” Katashi asked carefully, reading the papers more thoroughly now that he had an idea of what he was supposed to be getting from it.

“Quite possible – I’d even say likely, given the state of some of the hospital equipment we saw in the storage rooms. Your hospital is… not the best, not for things that aren’t poisons. Doesn’t much match what Tsunade-sama says about the Second War but it’s been years, things may have changed,” Shizune couched her words diplomatically, but Katashi had worked with Tsunade’s apprentice for years and knew what sort of disparaging comments were being held back.

The standards of the hospital were low; not so low as he was used to working with, but not as high as they should be in relative peacetime when speed wasn’t a desperate priority.

“Life-support will be dropped in a week,” Katashi said quietly, head bowed as he considered all the things his village needed so very desperately and how he, a nobody, was powerless to fix it. He couldn’t wait for Gaara-san to ascend, he really couldn’t.

“If we get back in tomorrow I can fix it,” Shizune said promptly, “Changing the IV and altering the charts so the treatment is continued for the next two days and she’ll start to come out of it on her own, the brain-scans were promising and I can accelerate it with a touch of chakra.”

“Thank you,” Katashi said finally, looking up at her and letting his exhaustion, his gratitude, seep through. “Thank you so very much, Shizune-san. I owe you a great debt.”

“Your treatments are payment enough, Arashi-san,” she demurred, “If they work, we will have each saved each other’s teammate. If they do not – at least you have given me hope to try.”

“Either way, I still consider myself in your debt,” he bowed where he sat, “And hope that one day I can make good on it. Many thanks, Shizune-san.”

“I can see I won’t talk you out of it. Very well – then tomorrow, similar time so it seems to be a scheduled visit, and I can take care of it,” Shizune said finally.

“Agreed. I shall take the watch,” Katashi stepped out of the small shelter with another bow and turned his face to the breeze, papers a deadweight in his hands. His village had so very far to go, and there was so very little he could do to help in person.

People needed to know about this, needed to realize that their medics weren’t trying their all, were being kept from trying their all by policy or lack of knowledge. He needed rumors to go out, to spread and make everyone wonder; make the medics curious about the reasons for a policy like this, make the trainees ask after more obscure methods and possible treatments – make the jounin and ANBU and senseis start taking a good hard look at the treatments their comrades and students and friends were getting.

Spreading his sensor net, he settled to his knees and started to plot.

This was going to be a long night.

***===***pagebreak***===***

Gaara ducked under a lash of wind, sand curling up over his foe’s feet and aborting the man’s attempt to leap skyward – but only for a moment as an uncontrolled burst of chakra interrupted his hold and a gale swept his target up and out of the reach of his more subtle efforts. Pillars of sand rocketed up, but that was a distraction, the real goal being to get Gaara – atop one of the pillars – in range to grab onto the grains of sand embedded in every crease of Katashi’s clothes.

He hurled the other shinobi towards the earth only to tumble after as his pillar dissolved into a cyclone the moment his focus turned from it. Sand welcomed him into its hold and he basked in the familiarity of the dune fields for an overindulgent moment before plunging under the earth in pursuit of zephyr-lightened steps.

Their spar crashed into the plains stretching southeast from the windswept dunes that made up the heart of Suna with a cackle carried on a breeze and a crashing wave of gritty ash-fine sand. After Kaoru had woken up – a miracle, it was murmured, thanked for, even as some ANBU, some more rumor-savvy jounin, started to eye the hospital’s medics with wariness – Katashi had gotten Shizune safely delivered to her previous abode, money and cure suggestions in hand, only to find he had a few more days before he could feasibly present himself with the mission completed.

His shadow clones had sent a few updates, so he knew they were on their way back and that the mission was, in fact, finished, but he couldn’t exactly say that, now could he?

So instead, Gaara had found an excuse to wander the desert – apparently, now he didn’t even warrant watchers when he headed straight for the heart of Suna, where there was supposedly nothing but sand – for the purpose of hunting his comrade down. It was far too long since they had been able to spar, after all.

Years-not-yet, if one wanted to be technical.

It wasn’t even a serious spar at this point, those had been taken care of within the first day or so of their meeting. No, this was more of an excuse to stretch their chakra, push their muscles and excite their minds in a way that had nothing to do with politics, with intrigue, with the web of deceit and horrifying _carelessness_ that had encased their home.

Finally, they stopped, their running spar having started in the sand-drenched dunes of the desert and ended on the sandy shores of one of the Hanguri Gulf’s many coves, dodging other humans and especially shinobi along the way. It had been a very fun few days.

“These are the moments where I don’t want to go back,” Katashi murmured, slumped in the comfortable seat Gaara had automatically crafted for him when his feet touched the beach.

“Liar,” Gaara retorted, amused, “You could not stay away.”

“All right then,” Katashi snorted, “These are the moments I wish the Kazekage could be killed _now_ , with a guarantee that no one worse will take his place.”

“There is no one _available_ to take his place,” Gaara shook his head, “There won’t be for years.”

Let Katashi think that Gaara was referring to himself, was referencing his own ascension as Kazekage when he was sixteen. It would just make the end result of this game they were playing all the more entertaining, because he was certain it would never occur to Katashi that by putting himself out there, by painting a target on himself and then daring to _survive,_ daring to _thrive_ , even while the shinobi began to mistrust and doubt the man currently leading them – he was presenting a very particular image.

One that would not be out of place on a Kazekage monument, if Suna was inclined to such grandiose and unnecessary displays.

Personally, Gaara hoped he was there when Katashi realized just who the natural successor to the current Kazekage was going to be. His reaction was going to be hilarious.

“I received a message from Naruto while you were gone,” Gaara said, redirecting their topic to more productive matters, “The toads apparently recommend finding the ‘place which speaks to your heart’ and ‘wandering towards self-realization’. Naruto interprets that as go wander in the desert and get thoroughly lost and something will happen.”

“…How helpful,” Katashi said flatly.

Gaara snorted and revealed the last paragraph of the letter, which gave them another option which some might call far more practical, “Or, go somewhere in the middle of nowhere and pump as much chakra into the summoning jutsu as you can. It’ll send out an open-ended query and interested parties who think they’ll find a match with you will answer.”

“That sounds even worse,” Katashi groaned, Gaara letting a laugh escape at that, because he was right. That sort of open-ended invitation would end in nothing but tears, in all likelihood. No limit on what summons could appear, no limit on how _many_ could appear – no, that method was not a particularly good one.

“Hatake-san says the first option is how his family obtained their contract generations ago,” he continued, shrugging, “I would honestly recommend it first, as we still have a week before you’ll be considered late, and I can track you down if it takes longer than a few days and we can try again some other time. But we only have a couple of months before you need to be in Mizu, and we need a communication option aside from these letters Naruto’s smuggling – interpreting his babbling into something sensible took far too long and it is _risky_. Toads are a known quantity, if it’s found that toads are carrying messages to and from Suna…”

“Strain on an alliance already weak,” Katashi grimaced, “We can’t afford to exacerbate that situation, agreed, Gaara-san.”

They sat in silence for a time, listening to the crash of the waves and the cries of gulls, before Katashi interrupted it with a groan and slumped further into his seat. Gaara raised an eyebrow and the older shinobi sighed. “Get lost in the _desert_? In _Suna_?” Katashi asked dryly, “Gaara-san, I’m going to have to be half out of my mind with dehydration and hunger to manage that one.”

He felt his lips twitch, but managed to keep his voice bland when he said, “I’ll save some water for you then.”

***===***pagebreak***===***

Katashi had been grumbling about the ridiculousness of summons for at least an hour now. After their chat by the Gulf, Gaara and he had gone back to the dune fields before separating, Gaara off to try out some of Katashi’s ideas for glass-based jutsus while he went wandering in the dunes trying to get himself thoroughly lost.

This was his _home_. He was never lost in Suna. How could he be? Track the sun’s movement to orient east to west, fracture chakra across the crystalline sand until it reflected back something more substantial than a coyote, call upon the wind to hurtle himself into the sky for vantage – his options were limitless, and his chakra sensing was subconsciously managed at this point, which was a habit he certainly didn’t want to break.

So here he was, two hours into his trek across the dunes in the heat of midday, having had nothing to drink in the past three hours and nothing to eat since this morning and he still. Wasn’t. Lost.

Stopping for a moment at the crest of a dune, he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He’d just have to go back to Gaara and tell him they’d try another day, and if they were really desperate the other method, because he just wasn’t seeing this working. He’d give it the rest of the day, but if he hadn’t managed to get lost by then it just wasn’t going to happen.

“Well, haven’t seen one of you in a while!” he heard, and Katashi looked askance at the limbed cactus to his left only to feel relieved when a small owl poked his head out of the hole in the primary limb.

“Not surprised,” Katashi shrugged, relieved the owl had shown himself. If the _cactus_ had been talking, he’d have been in real trouble. “Middle of the dunes are usually avoided. People find them disorienting.”

“Silly,” the owl hooted, sounding rather regretful, “But I don’t think you’re one of mine, no. Too fast, altogether. Too rushed. Continue on, shinobi. You’ll find the right one eventually.”

“My thanks,” Katashi bowed, because courtesy was a virtue even in the  middle of the dune fields, and proceeded on, unsurprised at the immediate transition from dunes to the juniper and scrub of the mountain flanks. He meandered on, wondering how much longer it would take for him to get thoroughly lost, because this still felt like home, when a pack of coyotes leapt from a bush and yipped and yowled as they raced around his feet before dispersing.

The biggest, head at his hip, stayed running alongside him for a while, eyes bright as it cackled, “Good to see one of you sorts. Been a while! But you’ve already got a trickster, I don’t need the competition. Keep going till you cross the riverbed, then hang a right at the sunset and head straight on to moonrise. Dawn’ll come to the left and you’ll see the mesquite. Those jewel-heads should like you just fine.”

“My thanks,” Katashi repeated, inclining his head this time as he didn’t want to stop running. The Coyote gave a final happy yip before darting into a shallow hollow and vanishing.

Katashi thought for a moment before shrugging. Following the directions couldn’t hurt, as it wasn’t like he’d made any more progress into getting lost. Maybe following directions would make him more confused.

He doubted it. But at least the coyote had been friendly.

The sun danced across the sky and he turned right, the moon twirling its way to the heavens, glowing a gentle white with no trace of the crimson and black nightmare that would haunt him all his life. It seemed hardly any time at all for dawn to paint the mesquite and juniper fields in golden orange and rose and he stopped at the base of a massive mesquite – it towered overhead, competing with Konoha’s trees in height and he stared up at it admiringly.

“Visitor!” someone trilled, a jewel-bright dart shooting out from the bush and buzzing around his head before settling in front of him, resolving itself into a sapphire headed hummingbird girdled with green. “Visitor! Visitor! It’s been so long!”

Before Katashi could say a word in reply there was an eruption of chittering humming buzzes and the sky exploded into flashes of jewel-bright color, some sized normally and some truly massive – the winds that buffeted him from the dog-sized bird’s wings were incredible and required some effort to weave around him so he could stand. When the motion stilled, birds hovering around him and winds billowing at his feet, he found himself still facing that first hummingbird but with the largest of them – body the size of Pakkun at least – directly before him.

“A visitor,” the large hummingbird’s voice was a low tenor, all the hues of the rainbow in his chest feathers. “Indeed, it has been a long time since any were sent our way by the others, a long time. You are of Sunagakure, shinobi?”

“I am,” Katashi replied with a deep bow, “Makiguchi Katashi, jounin of Suna.”

“And you seek a summons contract in the traditional manner,” the boss hummingbird – what else could he be? – nodded, shifting a little with some gale-force flaps of his wings to hover closer to Katashi’s eye-level. “Proper, very proper – but more importantly, very _polite_. Why do you seek a summons, Makiguchi Katashi of Suna?”

“I seek a means to communicate with my allies in Suna and Konoha without being detected by anyone in power. The Kazekage is a disgrace to the loyalty he holds and unworthy of it, but as it stands I have no power to face him except in my own survival despite his schemes.”

“Konoha?” the hummingbird cocked his head and one enormous eye searched him over, “I have not heard much, in these far reaches, but I do not recall warm feelings between those two villages, no I do not.”

“It is – I do not know how I can explain properly, but I must try,” Katashi spread his hands helplessly, but if he could not be honest here, in the realm of the summons, appealing to these birds, where could he be? “Years from now, a man claiming to be Uchiha Madara will attack the shinobi world with the goal of destroying the jinchuuriki and claiming their bijuu for his own so he can place the entire world in a genjutsu based upon the moon, removing the knowledge and desire for violence from the world in an attempt to stop all conflict by removing choice.”

There were interested murmurs and mutters from the crowd of hummingbirds around him but he kept his focus on the bird in front of him and continued, “The entire shinobi world united to end him, but he was capable of calling back the dead and enslaving them to his will, he could step across the world with hardly a thought and no kunai to trace his path and we simply did not have sufficient time or resources to fight him – not with how long he had to gather his strength. In an effort to stop his transportation technique the Rokudaime Hokage and Godaime Kazekage along with myself and another bodyguard attempted a sealing technique. The space-time effect did not work as anticipated and threw us years into the past, waking in our old bodies.”

“And you hope to cut off this monster at the root,” the hummingbird concluded, bobbing his head thoughtfully, “Yes. I can see the wisdom of it – the desert has whispered of you, of her favored children returning to save us all – because a world without conflict is a world without _life_ and that is no world I wish my children to be living in. Very well, Makiguchi Katashi – we will sign with you, so long as you swear by our tenets.”

“And what might those be?”

“To run with the wind, to pass on our contract to no one for we must be _sought_ , and to leave your enemies as dust in your wake,” the hummingbird recited, a pair of gold and crimson patterned birds the size of hares coming down carrying a scroll with only three names on it, all blurred and smeared beyond recognition.

“To this I swear.”

“Then sign, summoner. Sign and be known to us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "expect the next one by the end of August (2015)"... Well snaps guys, sorry about that. Had the chapters hashed out and then realized it was too forced and not believable so I culled it and started again - and finally got it settled to my satisfaction a year of off and on work later, jeez. At least I made it before a FULL year had passed from the expected date!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed.


	11. Nesting Plans

Katashi woke up late in the morning some weeks later – it was his day off and he’d just returned from a retrieval mission in Frost. For a change, nothing truly unexpected had happened. His next mission was going to be twice as obnoxious he was sure, because he doubted the Kazekage had given up on killing him.

“Nothing unusual to report, Arashi-san,” Jingoku said, buzzing over from his usual perch in the weapons-and-wire windchimes he’d built near his window for just that purpose. The sapphire headed and green-girdled hummingbird that had met him first was now his primary contact with his summons, remaining present unless he actively dismissed him for stealth purposes.

It had been decades since the hummingbirds had a summoner – if Katashi’s guesses based on the questions they asked were right, the last one had been around during the First Shinobi War, the other two had been well back in the Clan Wars era. The birds were understandably curious about the world they’d been restricted from for so long so Katashi had given blanket permission to wander at will – so long as any interesting information came back to him, and his teammates had constant monitoring.

The sheer volume of average-size hummingbirds made both requests simple enough to carry out and his new summons near immediately started pulling more than their own weight.

The chakra output problem had apparently been taken care of due to his method of gaining the scroll – since it hadn’t been passed down or found outside the summons realm, he’d opened a gateway for the birds to exit and they were taking full advantage. It was a bonus he was thankful was at the very least unknown by the majority, if not entirely unknown outside of those with such a contract, because it made his hummingbird scouts all the more unexpected.

“Thank you Jingoku-san,” he murmured, sitting up and getting ready for the day – he had nothing more strenuous than some grocery shopping and gear-maintenance planned so he forwent most of his weapons and armor. Going entirely unnarmed was out of the question for any shinobi, and even civilians in Suna carried at least a knife on them.

The bird simply chittered before returning to his usual perch by the window – Katashi opened it before he left the room and Jingoku flew off, undoubtedly meeting up with some of his own comrades and waiting for Katashi to head outside himself. It would be a while though, in addition to eating his own breakfast, he wanted to speak with Kaoru.

“Fucking piece of shit,” he heard her growling in the living room as he approached, “ ‘ _It’s simply a matter of chakra control, you should manage fine with your reserves’_ as if all kunoichi have shitty reserves and epic control you condescending jackass!”

He breezed past the frustrated woman and into the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, “Tea? Any food? I think there are some leftovers in here or I could make something.”

“Tea please and whatever you’re having is good thanks,” Kaoru called back, returning to snarling imprecations at the wooden leg prosthesis she’d been offered to test for the puppetry unit. Takeshi had apparently made some connections with the group and they’d been willing to offer her one of their prototypes for testing. Puppetry-masters had already a long-established practice of prosthetic usage but for those that weren’t masters at the technique it had never been considered an option.

If Katashi remembered right, Baki had ended up with puppetry-legs at some point in the never-happening future, so they had become more widely available eventually, but he’d never heard of them outside the puppetry corps before then. Things were shifting already.

He’d finished modifying the sign-of-life seal Kaoru had wanted while he was in Frost – and just in time, as Mizu was due to happen in a month at the most. Time to see what else they could change.

***===***pagebreak***===***

The Yondaime Kazekage hadn’t had such an interesting and entertaining thought-puzzle in a very long time. Certainly, there had been interesting puzzles, and entertaining puzzles, but all the interesting ones were important and risky and needed his full attention at all times, making them exhausting. And the entertaining ones had been entertaining in their subject matter, not their complexity, and were invariably dull.

But this one – the one his youngest had handed him when he’d been recovered from a kidnapping attempt, green eyes so like his mother’s actually showing something besides cool disdain, flat nothingness or berserker rage – this one was both.

Interesting, because somehow one of his shinobi had slipped through all the nets he’d formed to catch geniuses, bright stars of brilliance that may one day outshine him and bring all of Suna under closer scrutiny, and managed to explode onto the scene in a way that suggested careful planning. If not careful planning in the outing of his genius, very careful planning in the staggering of his flares of brilliance.

Entertaining, because the man was not a true threat yet, not in the least. He had no connections outside of his ANBU team, one of his teammates in IA and retired out for medical reasons, the other crippled and barely of use, potential puppetry prosthetic or not. The shift leader, Bakemono Eiji – he had been a problem, one or two times, trying to shelter those that were good, too good to risk – but he had clearly washed his hands of the issue with his handling of the seeming mission failure to save a teammate.

So soft, the Kazekage scoffed, examining the files he’d already memorized yet again. The man was a fool, should have gone to Konoha with that attitude, he’d fit right in with the tree-hugging lunatics. But he wouldn’t let this genius go, because soft-hearted or not Konoha was too strong as it was.

Suna couldn’t bear the scrutiny geniuses would bring. And he needed to play out his plans, stay in power a while longer and bring Suna to greatness while others thought they lurked in mediocrity, so he could not suffer geniuses to live. Too much of a risk now, too much of a risk then. If he were to be honest, until he was ready to retire, it would be too much of a risk always.

Geniuses were dangerous. They drew attention, unwelcome attention in their village’s weakened state. They were unstable to boot, just look at the mess most of them made of things – Orochimaru, Yagura, the Uchiha, even Iwa’s notorious Jikobu genius was a loose cannon and Kumo’s bizarre jinchuuriki relations just didn’t bear considering – between that, the inevitable attention they drew and the war that often followed their showing off, it was a wonder anyone tolerated the blasted people.

“I am tired of seeing this man dance through things unharmed,” the Kazekage finally spoke to the only other person in the room, the ANBU dropping to one knee the moment he spoke, bowing his masked head, “You will accomplish the diplomatic mission to Mizu’s leader, Yagura, after disposing of Makiguchi Katashi. Arrange it so his death does not affect the alliance. Upon your successful return, your teammate will be granted extended and paid leave to recover from injuries. Should you fail to return successful, I see no reason to bleed further money into a waste of resources. Am I understood?”

“It will be done, Kazekage-sama.”

***===***pagebraek***===***

Katashi sighed, swinging his feet idly as he sat on a balcony on a civilian ferry that drew close enough to their target island to make water-walking feasible. It was a fairly large ferry, a three-night trek with stops at two islands before circling back to the River Country port they’d started in. Ikku was not particularly happy, especially since they were in strict chakra-suppression mode, meaning his usual remedies for sea-sickness were out of the question.

While he would never wish misfortune on his teammate, not one of _his team_ , it was useful that he had basically locked himself in their bunk quarters and refused to emerge aside from seeking more water and crackers from the ship’s store.

After all, it meant the man next to him could sit down with a sigh and ask, “Your brother still sick?”

“Your sister still hunting for you?” he replied with a laugh, the black-haired man groaning and saying, “Don’t remind me Hikari-san! I don’t see why she’s so angry with _me_ , I’m just the escort! Tou-san made the contract!”

“And your tou-san sent you in his place for just that reason I’m sure,” Katashi snickered, playing along with the ruse that Hatake had set up in the short day he’d had to figure out how to follow them without being made as a shinobi. Ikku’s presence, while a pleasant surprise in most circumstances, made this particular self-assigned mission rather difficult.

The Hatake had avoided using henge and instead applied hair dye and make-up to give him a darker skin-tone, hair styled to flop down over his left eye. A reinforced kage bunshin of Naruto had used his bizarre transformation jutsu to turn into a young woman who bore a strong resemblance to Hatake’s disguise and who was apparently furious at her brother for escorting her to an arranged marriage to some hideously fat and wealthy merchant in Kiri.

“He _so_ owes me for this,” Hatake-as-Naka groaned, burying his face in his hands, “I’ll be lucky to make it there alive!”

“Maa, she won’t kill you, just maim you, I’m sure,” said Katashi-as-Hikari – no disguise was needed for him really, but he added some auburn to his hair to give him a bit of a different look.

Ikku hadn’t bothered with a disguise at all; considering how little he was seen out and about in the ferry that was just as well. They hadn’t wasted any effort on it.

“You could at least _pretend_ to be sympathetic, Hikari-san,” Hatake whined, voice pitched a few notches higher than his usual alto in a way that made Katashi’s vocal chords ache; that must be painful to keep up.

The whine was followed up by a joking shove, one hand on his shoulder, the other coming under to shove against his cheerfully blue and green knitted sweater, one tightly rolled piece of paper wedging its way through the knitted stiches and settling with a barely present murmur of chakra against his heart. Katashi-as-Hikari laughed and elbowed the man, adding a little extra force, a little extra surge, to pass on the message that the delivery was smooth, the package was secure. That was all they could afford to communicate aside from cover-story banter and jokes, Naruto-as-Sister appearing in full fury soon enough and sending Hatake darting for cover to the amused sympathy of onlookers. They were all _well_ familiar with the Naka family saga by now.

Settling in the two-man bunk he shared with Ikku, he stretched out with a sigh and let himself sink into a light doze, waiting until his teammate left to pull out the rice-paper and examine the message and seal inscribed so delicately onto it.

_Armored vest, gauntlets. Don’t die._

Smearing his blood across the storage seal, he caught the gifts Hatake had smuggled him and clung to them, allowing himself a brief moment to inhale deeply, taking in the scent of his new-forever teammates, the biting tang of metal and leather and oil smelling indefinably of _home_ , a different home, a less secure home, but no less home.

All he could afford though, Ikku would not be long. He quickly pulled the armored vest on, testing mobility briefly and was well-satisfied – layers of fabric mixed with leather, concealing thin overlapping plates of metal and ceramic that covered the majority of his torso. While similar to standard flak vests, it was unique in the fact that it was both extremely lightweight and chakra enhanced. That process was usually bypassed, if not avoided, because while useful it made the person wearing the armor into a beacon for a half-decent sensor.

It was yet another reason Hatake armor had been so valued – and the clan’s scion had only taken it further. Originally they had simply dispersed their chakra enhancements throughout the armor to the point that it didn’t show as a chakra enhanced set of armor, it showed up as a single explosive tag. Useful.

With a sage for a student and supplies and assistance from the forge masters of Tetsu no Kuni during some of their recovery periods, Kakashi had developed a technique to enhance his armor to the peak of structural stability while weaving the chakra in such a way that it blended in perfectly with natural chakra. Even _more_ useful.

After all, so long as he kept the vest and gauntlets covered, there was no reason for Ikku (or, more importantly, anyone else) to realize that he was armored in anything besides his ANBU standard pieces. Which gave him an edge.

And, as one old shinobi saying went, _gain an edge, take a mile._

***===***pagebreak***===***

Katashi quickly fell into the usual pattern with Ikku, taking the lead with the other ANBU trailing two steps behind and slightly to the left. It was a matter of an hour to ditch the ferry and leave no trace of their ever being there beyond the rosters – with the number of people on the ferry, their disappearance would probably not be noted. With the reinforced bunshin Naruto’s clone would probably spawn to further the cover up, they would get away with it scot-free.

The better part of that hour was actually spent running across the undulating water of the ocean, the salt-content actually making for an interesting contrast in the amount and regulation of chakra – Ikku had stumbled a few times before getting the knack for it. Katashi had done the same, once upon a time-not-yet, but now his immediate adjustment was probably just taken as another sign of his deception with regards to his abilities.

And, behind them a few miles, was a faint and well-concealed chakra presence that Ikku would never sense – his sensory range was more for close-quarters ambushes than long-distance detection. Hatake was tracking them.

Setting foot on the shoreline, he quickly darted up onto the cliffs, Ikku dropping to one knee beside him in the scrub and Katashi quickly started signing a plan.

 _Half day, potential ambush, scout,_ he gestured, _Me point, you secondary._

Ikku tilted his head and gave the single confirmation sign, Katashi nodding and springing forward again – there wasn’t much time to waste after all. This wasn’t a particularly large island, but the ambushers were undoubtedly already here, and he needed to make sure things would work out so that he and Ikku made it out alive.

Ideally, he could convince Ikku that he was dead and his teammate would escape, further selling the ruse to Suna. Kaoru – _please let the seal work, let it work don’t be stupid girl stay safe please –_ would know it was false, would hold things together for him – _Takeshi-friend-brother-center don’t hurt don’t grieve won’t be real promise_ – but the more he could keep Suna as a whole in the dark, the better.

Halfway through their scouting run, that flicker of chakra that had been following them settled along the shoreline to the north, closer to Kiri and closer to the assigned meeting point, though still distant enough to not be within anyone’s average sensing range. Having him there, close enough to feasibly serve as back-up with a bit of delay, far enough that there was no risk to them being discovered as cooperative just yet – it eased some of the tension that was thrumming through him, gave him something to look forward to when this was resolved.

They’d found no signs of ambush, and every sign that the meeting would go smoothly. By the time they’d finished the search, finding traces of the Kiri contingent they’d be meeting but nothing suspiciously large so they, as courtesy dictated, did not pursue – by the time they’d finished, it wasn’t long before the meeting was supposed to happen in the first place.

Katashi hissed out a breath between his teeth and pulled out the mission – an ornate scroll, offering terms of alliance that were to be either agreed to or negotiated with – between Suna and the unspecified side of the Kirigakure civil war. Ikku was watching with calm eyes behind his mask as Katashi took off his Crow mask; the porcelain was hooked to his belt and he felt oddly naked without it, the feeling only worsening as he dropped the hood of his burnoose and pulled down his turtleneck. Taking a settling breath and tossing the scroll casually between his hands, he cast a bemusedly resigned look Ikku’s way – _what strange lives we lead, neh old friend?_ -  and took a resolute step forward, intending to start a brisk walk towards the meeting point.

Rasping steel a weapon _Ikku was in danger_ **move** stars filled his vision.

A faint keen exited his throat and he looked down, one tessen deflecting the ninjato but not enough the blade was buried in his side his lung oh kami it _hurt_ the other tessen had hurled a barrier wind around them, curling to deflect any hurled weapons that came for him and his team and his partner and Ikku-san teammate-friend-precious-dead-yet-not _why_?

“So you improved your armor. It was to be a quick kill, taicho,” Ikku said quietly, pulling the sword from his side and picking up the scroll from the ground. “But the blade was poisoned.”

Of course it was, Suna was poison, was lethal as the desert she dwelled in, harsh and cruel but when you proved yourself you won so very much it burned in his veins, fire in his blood dropping him to his knees with a strangled cry, tessen falling from numbing fingers as he clamped his hand down on his side.

“I will finish the mission,” Ox – that was Ox, not Ikku, never Ikku, not again – strode away and Katashi felt his heart breaking at every step. Kaoru it had to be why else would he - ? He was a failure, he’d _failed_ in every way that mattered _failed_ Kaoru was crippled Takeshi was hurting and scared and hating and Ikku was _leaving him_ for an _ambush_.

Palm slamming into the ground, he snarled, twisting his chakra into a rough healing jutsu learned from Haruno Sakura, the pink-haired medical genius who had quickly surpassed her legendary sensei out of necessity and a grim joy in her work – it was harsh, yanking the poison from his wounds and if there was too much creating wounds in its wake, but he needed the speed far more than he needed gentleness.

Because they were still _his team_ and he _would not_ fail!

Green chakra boiled around the hand still clamped to his side, teeth clenching down and nails digging into the dirt because it _hurt_ it fucking _burned_ and _boiled_ and lashed and cut and when would it be _over_ he didn’t have _time_ for this shit - !

There. _There_. The poison was gone. He’d lost blood, but he had soldier pills to compensate for the moment. He kept pulsing healing chakra to his side and popped two pills into his mouth, dry swallowing and shooting forward, arriving near the meeting point soon enough and finding Ikku surrounded by four at least jounin-level shinobi – no masked man, not a surprise, but a bit disappointing in a well _of course_ it wouldn’t be that simple way – and fighting for his life. He had gone in expecting the usual level of treachery, but had gone in expecting the forging of an alliance.

He had not gone in expecting an ambush to the death.

Katashi dropped down to one knee, none of the combatants noticing him just yet – he _had_ chosen his approach rather carefully after all – and eyed the situation, trying to keep his mind on the task at hand while a portion of it he carefully partitioned away railed and wailed at the sheer injustice at the blasted _treachery_ from his teammate what had he _done_ where had he gone _wrong_ why was his team falling apart he’d tried _so blessed hard_ and he was _losing them all_ –

Kawarimi, he thought, snarling through the gibbering mess, that would do it, with some tweaks.

For a basic jutsu, it was surprisingly underused. Oh certainly, it was taken advantage of to avoid blows or inconvenient situations (Hatake’s scarecrow came to mind) but it was seldom used to swap out with another shinobi, despite the massive potential of that to both save comrades and work as a perfect kill set-up.

The reason was three-fold, he had found.

First, it required more chakra to do it with a living thing than a dead thing. And _exponentially_ more chakra to do it with a human as opposed to an animal, which meant you ran a high risk of being exhausted after performing it, leaving you in a bit of a bind.

Also, it was extremely disorienting for the target, so if you were going to use it to evacuate a comrade, your comrade would likely be on his knees for a few stunned moments, so it had best be in a safe spot. If the comrade was in the situation where a save by kawarimi was needed and feasible, this safe spot was doubtful.

Finally, channeling that much extra chakra into an E-rank jutsu required modification of the handseals, three quick seals that could be cut to one turning into eleven seals that could be cut to seven. This cut down on its usefulness for a quick escape, and the large amount of chakra necessary combined with the time needed to enact it meant that the build-up was easily detected, making its usefulness as an assassination move rather low.

But for a situation where he needed to gain the attention of an ally by flaring his chakra, get Ikku to an area where he would be slightly concealed and he himself was riding high on two soldier pills?

Well, it was tailor made.

Crow mask discarded – he wouldn’t need it anymore – he painted a simple word onto the white porcelain with shaking, blood-stained fingers.

Hopefully, Ox would obey one last order from his taicho.

“Kawarimi no jutsu!”

_Run!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So THIS chapter has been done for over a year, and I'm pretty happy with it, so I figured there was no reason to delay posting any longer. Don't expect this sort of rate to continue!


	12. Meetings by the Sea

Dodge to the left, half-spin and duck. Send a shuriken whirling, catch a tanto on a gauntlet ( _didn’t even scratch_ ) and kick in the stomach with an extra surge of chakra; one down organs crushed, still a threat – but onto the next. Twirl through blades, tessen snaps open – _hurry it up Hatake!_ – and a flash of wind slices through but hits stone. A heel strike onto the ground distracts the doton user and launches him into the air; contort and spin the breezes to his will, now arch down towards the ground and _lash_ – another down, blood mixed with mud and dirt and brains and acid.

Chirping filled the air _back-up, finally he was almost through just a bit longer push a bit further there you go you worthless failure_ and a silver-haired menace slashed through the two remaining shinobi with a snarl, turning in time to steady him as he landed.

“Mission, successful,” Katashi gasped, blood flecking his lips. The healing jutsu had pulled out the poison and the continued flow of chakra had helped seal his lung for the fight, but he needed time and some peace to fully recover.

“For now,” Hatake agreed, fingers crossing and a shadow clone popping into existence next to him, quickly starting on clean-up and staging. They needed to make sure Katashi was conceivably dead, but not _conclusively_ dead – not yet anyways. “I have the ninken at base-camp, they will guard. We have time, Katashi, don’t rush things, you’re injured badly.”

“I let him in my guard,” Katashi groaned, Hatake picking him up and starting to run back to the camp he’d chosen. “I _trusted_ him he was my _team_ why would he – they’re falling apart, I’m _losing_ them again Hatake I _can’t_ – “

“Breathe. Just breathe.”

No false assurances, no guarantees that things would be all right, that they would fix this too, that friendship and love and family would carry the day – not like Naruto would profess, not like Gaara would hopefully suggest as if by saying it, it would become real. Just a simple suggestion, simple order, between equals, between comrades, telling him that it may never be all right, he may lose his team forever yet again to treachery and loss-of-kinship rather than the shades of death but he would continue on as he had before-yet-not as he would forever-not-always.

All he had to do was breathe.

Difficult with a punctured lung, but more than doable.

“Well shit,” the familiar voice of Pakkun drawled, “You look worse for the wear, Katashi-san. You want us to guard, boss?”

“Indeed, I need to help with the healing,” Hatake replied, setting Katashi down on the ground and helping him sit up a bit, leaning back against a log. They probably spent too long just staring at each other silently, sizing up the other and wondering what new trauma and drama they’d missed in the interim that they’d have to deal with and shore up and support and avoid all at the same time because like _hell_ if they were going to lose this bizarre brotherhood too.

“So, he got his ninjato through my armor, hmm?” Hatake grumbled, pulling up the burnoose so he could undo the armored vest and he grimaced, seeing the pink foam oozing up between Katashi’s fingers.

“Mobility would be hampered by anything more in that area,” Katashi murmured, keeping his breathing shallow and even by sheer force of will, “And the seals slowed it down – that strike is designed to pierce the heart and kill instantly, the poison was overkill. I suspect he planned I would dodge somehow.”

“Did you?” the Hatake asked, peeling off the vest and cutting his shirt away, a medical kit dropped off beside him by one of his dogs.

“Deflected a bit with the tessen, but I thought we were under attack – that deflection was instinct, not comprehension. So not enough to make that much of a difference.”

“He was well out of sensing range when I reached the fight,” the Konoha-nin frowned through his mask, “You switched with him so he would escape. Carry word of your death and his successful betrayal of you?”

“Better than my just vanishing,” Katashi agreed, slumping back as he felt the Hatake’s precisely controlled white-chakra seep into his system, setting to work on the lung-wound. The man wasn’t a particularly _talented_ medic, but his precise control and eidetic memory meant he was better than passable.

“Hmm. Sent as supposed back-up, actually as a knife in the back?”

“I suppose my tendency to survive the missions-gone-wrong had become troublesome,” Katashi laughed hoarsely, coughing and Hatake increased the medical jutsu’s power, murmuring, “Steady there, take it easy.”

“He was _team_ ,” Katashi whispered, staring up at the grey-blue sky. “I _trusted_ him.”

“He will die,” Hatake promised, Katashi wondering if he should even bother trying to dissuade the man. It would be Hatake or Gaara, and Naruto had a particularly cruel streak for those who betrayed his family’s genuine trust, found after too many betrayals and too many wrenching losses – and as much as the betrayal ached and twisted and screamed he didn’t want Ikku dead he just wanted to know _why._ What had been held over him, had anything been held over him had he done it of his free will had they threatened Kaoru was he that bad pathetic horrid awful of a taicho?

“Done,” his friend murmured, removing his hands from his side and wiping away the short-lived tears that he felt seeping out of the corner of his eyes, “Easy there, Katashi.”

“How have you been?” Katashi forced himself to ask, the Konoha nin sighing and stretching out next to him, draping an arm over his shoulders before replying, “Well, I’ve been designing some _beautiful_ battle-armor for you and me – mine’s almost finished, I need you to lurk in the Hatake compound a few weeks before we can get yours finalized – Naruto’s having a lot of fun with that shadow clone reinforcement you came up with and the Sandaime has declared you a personal hero as he can now use a Kage bunshin to get more paperwork done without people figuring out it’s not really him with the pointed poke of a finger – his teammates apparently foiled his attempts far too often – oh and Danzo’s taken care of, even got that Sharingan seal figured out I’ll have to tell you about it, so ROOT clean-up is ongoing – ”

Katashi let the placid words wash over him, distracting him from the burning ache Ikku had left behind and hoping that this betrayal wasn’t a sign of how this self-assigned mission of theirs was going to work out.

***===***pagebreak***===***

Kakashi waited until his Suna friend had fallen asleep before he whistled Pakkun over to him and explained the situation – the dog’s growls and snarls were viscerally satisfying. While it had taken him years after his father’s suicide to recognize team-as-pack, he had always understood the importance of _pack_ and the betrayal of that pack was so contrary to _everything_ in his being that he simply could not comprehend it.

As far as he was concerned, anyone who turned traitor to their pack was insane and needed to be put down like the mad dogs they were.

Which meant this Ikku fellow’s days were numbered and they would be miserable indeed – particularly if he managed to get a message to Naruto and Gaara. While the pair of them often forgave massive transgressions against themselves and even their entire people, Naruto more than Gaara, they had developed fierce protective streaks when it came to their guards.

Inconvenient as all hell, since it was _their_ job to guard _them_ , not the other way around, but right now he was all too willing to take advantage of that trait.

His clone had dispelled while he’d rambled Katashi to sleep, leaving memories of an artfully arranged battle-scene and enough fire and destruction to conceivably leave no solid traces of Katashi’s corpse, had it been there. If there was one thing they were both familiar with, it was destroying corpses, so that part hadn’t been particularly difficult. Checking to make sure the traitorous scum had actually left and wasn’t lying in wait to go after them again had taken a bit longer, but it they’d confirmed that the man had left the island, taking Katashi’s discarded Crow mask with him. That should be proof enough for those Suna-dwelling assholes.

His discussion with Pakkun finished, he pulled out a scroll and started writing a missive to Naruto – depending on what Katashi had managed with regards to the summoning contract he’d hoped to negotiate these past months, he’d either get creative with messengers or he’d hand it off for Katashi to send. Either way, he needed to draft it, encode it, then scramble it some more just for the hell of it.

Naruto, surprisingly, liked those sorts of puzzles. Apparently they reminded him of seals.

Once that was done, he briefly debated continuing work or leaving his ninken to stand guard for the night and sleeping. In the morning they’d finalize their disguises and head out, making this the last time he’d be able to summon his pack until the mission was over, so the pair of them would be alternating watches for the next while and a full night’s sleep would be a wistfully dreamed of luxury soon enough.

Well, who said he had to choose?

_Kage bunshin no jutsu!_

***===***pagebreak***===***

“Talk about layering disguises,” Katashi chuckled, the pair going through their sealed scrolls of supplies and divvying things up. “You have a truly ridiculous amount of chakra-woven fabric.”

“Well, it’s a clan tradition, which left me a massive stockpile,” Hatake shrugged, “The shirts and masks are the least of it – I found a box from a great-uncle that was filled with byakugan-proof _bedsheets_. I brought some, because why not – but still.”

Katashi blinked, considered that and the possible motivations, before deciding it was probably just as well they’d never know. “Well, enough shirts to last us quite a while, masks, fitted hoods, goggles and blank porcelain with the allied army kanji – I like those.”

“Those and the burnooses are going to serve as a uniform of sorts,” Kakashi explained, “We’re going to have to go around the nations to stop the Akatsuki, without tying ourselves to any one nation, but since we have a unified purpose, might as well show it – it also means we can do things and separate ourselves from that purpose should we want to.”

“Uniforms are a damn good idea,” Katashi murmured, nodding, “Right. Now, what was that about your sharingan being sealed? You used the chidori, so it’s not now, right? Or did you develop a compensation without the sharingan?”

“No, it’s active now,” the Hatake shrugged, handing over a scroll, “So you’ll need to redo the sealing matrix. Once we got it working on Danzo things fell apart for him – seems he used that genjutsu feature a lot more than we expected and sealing up an eye destroys all jutsus it has active. It’s lucky we managed to get him isolated in T&I before vengeful ex shinobi came after him.”

“Hmm. Takes too long to activate for combat applications – unfortunate, that’d be perfect for the Tobi-Mizukage situation, particularly with that breaking of active jutsus.”

“Figure between the two of us we can either figure out a modification or a trap that will let us apply it,” Kakashi pointed out, “Extracting the chakra cut-off portion we should be able to make it impossible to actively use chakra within the field of the seal which would remove his teleportation effect at least.”

“We tried that one, remember?” Katashi pointed out, “We lost Akatsuchi that way.”

“Because we didn’t realize that it cut _all_ chakra out, we thought it just kept jutsus and the like from working, so his speed enhancement failed,” Hatake reminded him, “Creator of the seal is the exception, remember? So Tenten-chan had been fine and we’d assumed that meant it was appropriately targeted as we were in a rush. And then he was expecting it.”

“But if he traveled back with us – “

“Then we disguise it in the field itself and lure him into the center, the latent chakra should be easy enough to conceal – “

“And if we use a solid medium like stone and cover with soil except for a bit – “

“That would remove the effect of damage, but to account for the extra nature chakra in the medium would make the array – “

“A lot larger, right, especially if we expanded the central field so that it’s easier to maneuver him subtly but the element of surprise would be enough – “

“And then it’s just a matter of plain old killing if we’re just _fast_ enough – “

“Get him to start a monologue, that should stall him – damn this array is going to be _massive_ …”

“It’s going to take time to set up, but it should work as an initial plan.”

“All right, we’ll start implementing and set up once we get to the main island, most of the fighting is there especially towards the end.”

“And maybe a secondary, to test it before we put it to the final use?”

“…Probably a good idea.”

The two shinobi eyed their supply piles for a moment before shrugging and starting to pull on their new disguises. Armored vests and gauntlets – Hatake’s clone had fixed Katashi’s last night – mesh under everything to provide extra protection, water-proofed burnooses in mottled blues and greys, artfully faded and patched to indicate hard use that had never happened and fingerless gloves with reinforced knuckles.

Pulling up his new navy blue turtleneck – warmer than the standard Suna issue, thank kami – he covered his face and pulled up the attached hood to cover his hair fully, placing the blank porcelain mask over his face with a sigh. Their remaining supplies were quickly put away, everything indicating their formal allegiances sealed in a scroll apiece and sent to Hatake’s summons’ realm. Naruto had a set of six one-time use contracts in case they didn’t make it back, so he’d be able to get to the hounds and obtain anything they sent to be guarded in the ninken’s realm.

Katashi should probably send a few one-time-use contracts of his own to the other chibi-kage, Gaara had six as well as a permanent hovering patrol, but it was better safe than sorry.

“Well, do you want to seal the sharingan now or wait until we get to the next island?”

“I’d say now, but I think that someone’s going to be sent to check on that ambush team soon so I’d rather get out of here before doing it – takes a while and neither of us were up to it yesterday.”

“Definitely not, my focus was shot last night. Right then – tertiary with the cave system to the northwest?”

“Virtually uninhabited at this point, sounds good as any. Race you?”

“Of course!”

The run was entirely silent and was a good thing to start out with. This was the start of a long-term collaboration where only they would know the other’s true name and character. Long-term undercover operations were always difficult, and while in this case it was less undercover and more acting as they felt without concern for their comrades at home being suspicious, it would still be difficult. Having the chance to grow used to one another’s chakra signatures and once again fall into the patterns that they’d developed years-from-now-ago when the four members of Team Awesome had taken on missions others would call hopeless and insane could only be a good thing.

For that matter, _they_ often called the missions hopeless and insane, but when the enemy was a megalomaniacal crazy genius Sharingan wielder with an army of dead legends, there weren’t many other options available.

“So, how are we going to present ourselves?” Hatake asked, voice distorted by the masks but not unrecognizable to one who knew him well, taking the first step onto shore.

“A team, of course,” Katashi replied, that much was obvious, but thought it over, finally saying, “You clearly have ideas. What are they?”

“A duo of shinobi who have a personal grudge against the masked man – I don’t know if they figured out his control of Yagura before or after the end of the war, so a grudge against a member of Yagura’s side with the opportunity to be specific if necessary – imply that our identities are hidden because we have bounties, true on my part, and because village-to-village, we could never be caught working together.”

“One of us will be assumed to be from Iwa,” Katashi pointed out immediately, it was a natural assumption as Iwa was the default enemy of everyone except Kumo and Mizu, and Mizu only because of distance.

“That will be me, I have a mediocre earth affinity and my lightning affinity as myself is too well known,” Hatake explained, “I’ve also infiltrated Iwa before and dealt with them extensively before the Fourth War, so it will be easy enough to hint at it. Your wind affinity is too strong and too damned useful to be set aside, so they’ll likely guess you are from Suna.”

“That dovetails nicely with the plan I came up with,” Katashi nodded, bounding up the cliff-sides to a cave-network they had once used as a base in the Fourth War – at one point it had been used by smugglers and pirates, but it had been decades ago even now, so it would make for a decent retreat once they got it secured.

“Oh?” Hatake prompted, tilting his head slightly and flicking his fingers in mute query – with a peculiar double-twitch that was rather common in Iwa’s elite. Katashi snorted and returned it with a vulgar gesture from Kumo only a slip away from Suna’s signal for acceptance of orders, the Konoha-nin’s shoulders shaking with amusement.

“With Ox being set against me like that and my death being assumed, I need to show up in Suna again in a way that makes my later elimination politically unwise. The easiest way to do that, and to offer the illusion that I had simply been fulfilling my mission unaware of the news spreading back home, is to arrive with an ambassador from Mizu in tow, alliance proposal in hand and full of thanks for sending me to aid in their revolution,” Katashi explained, starting to set up the complex jutsu barriers they had once-yet-never thrown up as a matter of course. The cave had a spring and multiple exits – this was a base they’d want to keep as long as possible.

Kakashi barked a laugh, ink and brush pulled out of his sleeves as he began the layered sealing array that concealed all but natural chakra from sensors. Courtesy Jiraiya’s notes, this time. “You just want to tease that bastard Kage of yours,” the Hatake snorted, “Can’t say I blame you. Any word on summons by the by?”

Katashi grinned.

“ _Kuchiyose no jutsu!_ ”

“Hummingbirds,” Hatake said, staring at the preening sapphire and green-banded bird, “That… fits alarmingly well, actually.”

“Jingoku, this is one of my allies of Konoha, Hatake Kakashi,” he introduced, the bird bobbing in the air and chirping, “Pleasure to meet you! An ally of Katashi-san’s _and_ a smith? Not one to miss!”

“Hatake, this is Jingoku, my primary contact and a master at genjutsu-typed attacks along with the typical wind mastery, of course.”

“Of course,” the Hatake finally chuckled ruefully, bowing slightly to the summons, “To keep up with you a mastery of wind would be a basic requirement. A pleasure, Jingoku-san. A true pleasure, and a true honor. Now… how to use this?”


	13. Those Left in the Sun

_Don’t go running off half-cocked Kaoru-chan. If I’m reported dead, Takeshi’s going to need you._

Sometimes it was only taicho’s words – his _accurate_ words – that kept her from going missing-nin and bolting for Mizu. Maybe she was down a leg, maybe she wasn’t up to her old skill level, but she was a solid jounin again and her taicho was _missing._ He was reported dead, Ikku coming back with injuries, stories of an ambush, a mask painted in blood and hurting in a way she could only hope she never understood.

Holding her team together was hard on a good day, especially after taicho stopped lying about what he could do. But keeping her teammates from flying apart at the seams now, without taicho standing there so utterly confident that they could do anything because they were a _team_ – it was hard. It hurt.

Every morning, every night, every moment she knew she was unobserved, she checked her left hip’s tattoo. She’d made some story up about wanting a new design to replace her ANBU ink, rendered faded and blurred when she was let go, but the curled and twisted design was so much more than a replacement. It was her lifeline – if it shifted, if those twists straightened and unraveled to a less abstract pattern – then her taicho was dead. Really dead.

And she’d be on the next boat to Mizu, Kazekage’s head on a pike only her first stop en route to vengeance.

“Got dinner, senpai,” she called over her shoulder as her remaining roommate walked in from work, “Sand-dumplings and sides, didn’t feel like cooking. Ikku coming tonight?”

“On a mission,” Takeshi said, voice flat in a way that was – was dishearteningly familiar, now. Taicho hadn’t been the only one dependent on his partner, she knew, but knowing the dependency flowed both ways hadn’t prepared her for dealing with one half of their whole on her own. “Hand-picked. He’s going to be up for promotion soon.”

“Survived a mission gone wrong,” she pointed out quietly, pouring some sake and wincing when Takeshi threw back the glass like water. That had been decent quality stuff.

“Oh yes,” Takeshi said darkly, an ugly cast coming over his features and Kaoru already knew she wouldn’t like where this was going. “Survived a mission gone wrong – survived _Katashi_ – and with a wonderfully pat tale of how they were utterly shocked, dismayed at treachery and _my Katashi_ so badly wounded he gave himself up to cover his retreat.”

“And the Kazekage gives him _honors_ ,” Takeshi spat, Kaoru slamming her hand down on the counter and rising to her feet, glaring at him because damn it all, they were _all_ hurting. He had _no right_.

“The Kazekage would give anyone who brought news of taicho’s death honors!” she barked, voice thrumming with fury, “Ikku’s torn up about this too, senpai! Torn up and guilty and _aching_ and you’re spitting on that! On years of teamwork, of comradeship! Is that what taicho would want? To toss all this away, toss away his _family_ , because you can’t bear the idea of someone else surviving when he didn’t? He would have died for any of us, Takeshi. He would have gone to death gladly, thinking his team would outlive him. You _know_ that.”

“He’s dead!” Takeshi snarled, eyes wide with fury, with hurt, and Kaoru cursed taicho for making her promise to look after him, to keep him safe, because damn it all – telling him taicho was alive wouldn’t be safe. Not with how he’d react, with how he’d give the game away. It was too soon.

“He’s dead so no, Kaoru, I _don’t_ know what he’d want, all I know is that he’s _dead_ , and that _Kage_ stole him from us,” Takeshi spat, rising to his own feet, a bitter helplessness in his voice as he finished, “And there’s _nothing_ I can even do.”

Kaoru watched him start down the hall with an aching heart and bowed her head, whispering a prayer to the Great Wind and finishing with a promise.

She’d give taicho a week more, to get home, to get word to them – to do anything. But she wasn’t going to let Takeshi get himself killed over this needless grief.

***===***pagebreak***===***

Gaara ducked, letting Temari blast wind over him and he rolled to his feet, sand surging with him and launching Kankuro’s puppet into range of their target, his brother frowning as his chakra-strings stretched a tad further than they had before – but he’d manage. They’d practiced this.

He almost had his _siblings_ back.

Just in time too, because Katashi had left for Mizu just over a month ago, his teammate arriving back within two weeks bearing news of his death in an ambush and Gaara hadn’t needed to know his father’s plots, his father’s _style_ , to see his hands all over this. A teammate, trusted in a way that Suna officially held was weakness, with another teammate weakened and vulnerable to blackmail – no, there was no mystery in how it had happened, not for him.

But for others – for others it was a tragedy, and if a few who realized that Katashi had been targeted by something less than coincidental eyed each other with sorrow, with half-hearted wonder at what could have been – well, Gaara couldn’t reach them. Not himself. He needed Katashi’s team for that, and working out how to approach them was taking him longer than he’d hoped.

He wasn’t going to be _idle_ these years after all. Not when he could let Katashi’s deeds grow in the telling, let his reputation grow in whispers and stories told around bars and toasted in memory of a potential spark lost. All without the Kazekage caring, without the man worrying and responding. Dead legends were no threat, after all. Dead geniuses were just corpses to burn.

And when Katashi came back, Gaara smiled, and knew it was a fearsome thing as the assassin they’d captured blubbered in terror. He let the man quake as the three of them approached, sensei following behind with quiet swishes of his veils. He wasn’t the target, no.

But he’d do for now.


End file.
